Things like Vim can speed up coding, you spend less time on the actual editing of the text. I used to just use vim (macvim in fact), but for php i recently (1 year?) switched to PhpStorm with a VIM plugin. That was a huge speed increase, being able to cmd+click on method names and be taken to its code and probably about 20-30 other features i use in php storm that i never had in macvim (even with a whole bunch of vim plugins).
(the vim plugin in phpstorm isn't perfect, but definitely good enough)
But I find the biggest speed ups are things like:
- using frameworks (and knowing about them - so you know everything the framework contains/can do) speeds a lot of things up. It helps to know a framework inside out as well as a majority of the popular libraries that are used with it.
- And knowing what libraries exist to do whatever job you are trying to do can save a lot of time. I think almost everyone has at one point coded something then later on found a perfect library (or even 'snippet') that they could use and would have saved a lot of time. As long as the library is mature enough I'd always prefer to include a library and use that rather than spend hours/a day/days/longer on coding something from scratch. It also helps if something stops working - you can probably find someone with experience with that library. Of course it does come with the disadvantage of it might not 100% fit what you need to do...
But it isn't like coding is a race. You often save a lot of time by going slower and planning things out. I used to plan apps out in a text file, but realised a few years ago that getting away from the computer and planning out everything on paper (lots of sheets of paper, lots of arrows, lots of mess, but in the end it makes sense) gets everything planned correctly before even coding, so there is no need to refactor big sections of your app. I always have a notebook of notes when programming now... even with lots of squiggles and messy handwriting it helps a lot more than notes in text files or even worse notes (like in depth to do notes) in /* comments */ or //comments .