Tips and tricks for writing fixes

Developers often face productivity challenges due to traditional security tools that scan completed code for vulnerabilities and provide delayed feedback. Semgrep addresses these issues by offering fast, customizable analyses that integrate smoothly into developer workflows, reducing false positives and enhancing usability. To further improve the developer experience, Semgrep includes autofix functionality within its rules, allowing for automatic resolution of detected issues, which can be previewed and applied via command line options. Developers can write their own fixes using metavariables, which help reuse existing code components, and ellipsis metavariables for more complex patterns, although these have limitations in language support. By combining pattern and pattern-inside approaches, and using focus-metavariables, developers can target specific insecure code constructs for rewriting, ultimately improving both security and productivity.