Development

[drdoug]

People who code! What tools do you use? What do you think of them?

I'm asking because I want to up my coding capabilities, and getting to grips with better tools looks like it might be a quick(ish) win. Here's what I'm using.

Comments

[babysimon]

Not a huge amount to say but:

I prefer Intellij IDEA to Eclipse for Java, Intellij does incremental compilation better and has a UI that makes more sense to me. Personally I never got on with using either of them for not-Java, just too much stuff there that assumes a big statically typed compiled language where refactoring really matters but is hard work. Might be coloured by trying to use both for Erlang, plugins existed but were useless.

After years of bouncing around between different GUI text editors every couple of years I finally bit the bullet and learnt Emacs in 2010 for Erlang (and then everything else). Yes, it's old school and RMS likes it, but it is powerful, really does support lots of languages, and I expect it will be around for the rest of my life.

I tried to fully Puppetise a Wordpress install once, it was possible to get Puppet managing the SQL-side settings but a royal pain. I don't think there's anything better though.

Docker is worth knowing about; the basics do not take long to learn and I tend to think it's an easier approach than long-lived server images managed with Puppet / Chef / whatever. But do you have to manage servers?

Git cheat sheet is the only way (or actually learn it :-) ). The Github GUI client for the mac is nice if you really don't want to learn (but hides quite a bit of what's going on). I don't think any other VCS is any better, and you have the disadvantage of using a more obscure thing.

[venta]

Seconded on git client use... At least with the command line, when you've messed up your repo you can run back through the commands and show someone what you did :)  Trying to help a colleague out with a git mess the other day, and all I had to go on was "I pressed some buttons and now everything is bad".

[drdoug]

Hah. Yes. Also holds out the prospect of being able to understand my own way out of a mess.

I can confess I once messed up a (toy) git repo in the past ... and restored it by copying files from my ordinary file backup system that conveniently had an image from just before I messed things up. It worked way better than I expected, and/or created problems that went totally over my head.

[drdoug]

Good point about Emacs being likely to continue to exist for ever. I'm in no position to cast aspersions on tools purely for being old school, and while I don't agree with RMS about everything, just because he likes something doesn't make it bad.

do you have to manage servers?

Not if I can help it, at least at the moment. I'm thinking about wider options, but 'get someone else to do it' is probably going to stay my favourite answer for anything that smells of sysadmining. But I do like to be able to have a sensible conversation with them.

(or actually learn it :-) )

Actually learning git is on my long-term tech self-improvement list, and has been for almost as long as Eclipse, :)

I don't think any other VCS is any better, and you have the disadvantage of using a more obscure thing.

Yeah, git has eaten the world now, I think.