I felt stuck as a programmer.
At a certain point, there seems to be no apparent way to keep improving.
I’ve done lots of random projects and learnt lots of random things (and taught some of them to you).
But am I actually getting better? Is there a point in learning random topics that I will never use?
A recent event changed my mind.
Coding agents can only work on one folder. But often, you need to reference a file or a project that's in a different folder.
I'm sure there's a solution, but I can't find a simple and universal one. One solution is to move the two folders, create a parent folder, and run the agent there. But it's just inconvenient (even though some tools allow you to open multiple folders in one workspace).
How do I let the agent know that the file exists without changing anything?
Then I remember this weird little tech called “symlink” that I’ve written about.
In short, it's a file that stores the path of another file. It works pretty much the same as a shortcut on Windows.
With symlinks, solving the context problem is easy. Just create a symlink to the external file inside the project your agent can access.
The best thing is
You don't have to move anything
You don't have to copy the folder, so it uses almost zero extra storage
You can directly edit the files in this folder, and it will automatically sync back to the original folder
You can remove it easily
It’s just one command
ln -s /path/to/external/folder ./local-symlinkLooking back, I'm only able to find this solution because I decided to learn something random that I'm curious about.
Every time you decide to "waste" time learning something new, you become slightly better.
Over time, these seemingly unrelated topics will create a large knowledge base and become a valuable toolbox of yours.
- Fee from Anime Coders
PS: Some tools like Claude Code let you add an extra folder to your current folder, so you might not need to use symlinks.
