Favorite Developement Tools

[Thell]

What tools do you recommend to others?

I've been using eclipse for just over a year now for java work and can't say enough good about it.  Just this last month I went ahead and subscribed to myEclipse.  Hopefully it will work good for php/xhtml/css.

For virtually any other coding it is either ultraedit or vim for me.

How about you?

[Luke]

- Mac
- Taco

Done.

Granted, there are some other things I could use, but those do just fine for most of it.

Plus, I wouldn't trade my Mac for any other machine out there. Well, unless it was another Mac.

[quentin]

editplus and nano cover my needs.

[Andrea_R]

gPHPEdit and Gimp.

Even over on the Windows box it was Gimp and jEdit. Before that it was Notepad until it screwed stuff up. We also have visual Studio on there, but that was mostly for Ron and heavy work, plus the machine horked down like craaaazy.

(I can't wait to see Ron's answer...)

[Luke]

Photoshop here.

[drmike]

For virtually any other coding it is either ultraedit or vim for me.

+1 for ultraedit.  back in my cracking days, that was a major tool and one of the first that you had to learn how to lift a code out of.

I don't even know if I could do it with the newer versions out now.

A mirror of the old site.  Try and figure out what tutorials I wrote:
http://www.woodmann.com/fravia/index.htm

Background:
http://z4ziggy.wordpress.com/2007/03/13/dont-give-a-man-a-fish-teach-him-how-to-fish-instead/

The current site:
http://fravia.com/

[Thell]

Never really got into image editing enough to acquire a preference.  I just muddle through that kind of stuff as my artistic ability stagnated at about the age of three.

Luke, a little attached eh?

I'm with you though.  I'd love to get a nice Powerbook or a Toughbook tablet but I'm just too attached to my T40.  Once you get started customizing your setup the games over.

Have you got local installs or private servers for for your testing?  I've been thinking about getting another mac mini (since it is sooooo darn quiet) and setting one up but for now a vm satisfies my needs.

[Thell]

No friggin F'ing way!!!

We gotta talk; I remember the first days of getting lost in the rabbit hole.

Still do alot of reversing for private needs myself.

[Thell]

My god that's brought some major memories flooding back.  Hours of deadlisting before IDA got around to gui'fying everything.  Although, I have to admit it sure is easy now but not quite as fun.  Now the fun isn't so much in figuring out how things where done as what you can them to do.

The wisdom obtained...  Oh what blessed joy.

[drmike]

I feel old.  Those tutorials that I wrote are ten years old.

[Thell]

LMAO;  I was just thinking I must be older than you...

[Luke]

Luke, a little attached eh?

Hell si! 

I'm with you though.  I'd love to get a nice Powerbook or a Toughbook tablet but I'm just too attached to my T40.  Once you get started customizing your setup the games over.

I've got a couple new additions on my list. This coming winter/spring, it'll be one of the new Mac Pro's, once the new chips and such come out. With as many cores as I can get my hands on.

Have you got local installs or private servers for for your testing?  I've been thinking about getting another mac mini (since it is sooooo darn quiet) and setting one up but for now a vm satisfies my needs.

I do most of my work off of an iMac. It usually fits the needs, but it a little sluggish with some of the hd video and 3d graphic stuff I get into on occasion. If I did that sort of work more frequently, I'd have a Mac Pro by now.

I do have an XServe that I do a lot of testing on, as well as my local machine. I also have a ton of *nix boxes available as well.

Oh, I "could" also test on some Win 2k3 Server boxes, but um... ewwwww!

[drmike]

I do have an XServe that I do a lot of testing on

Best money I ever spent was on three of those XServe Raid boxes. Soccer moms like to delete.

[Luke]

I won't disagree one bit, Doc.

OK, yes you're paying a bit of a premium for it to be an Apple and run OS X. However, without getting into a big ass debate about it, I'll leave it as:

"It's worth every penny."

[Andrea_R]

Soccer moms like to delete.

It's our tidy-up nature.

[drmike]

Soccer moms like to delete.

It's our tidy-up nature.

"What does this button do?"

"Oh, is that what delete means?"

"I didn't mean it!"

"I didn't do it.  Hubby (or the kids or the cat or the...) must have done it even though he doesn't have my password."

"I didn't think it would really go away."

[Luke]

"It wasn't me, honest! Got pictures? Got video tape? Wasn't me! I swear it!"

Yep... been there, done that.

On one install, I finally made it policy that items deleted were unrecoverable, and put a big notice on the manage page that hitting the delete button would remove the item (post/page) permanently.

It didn't stop it all together, but it did give me something to point them to.

"Oh, I didn't think you were serious."

Well, guess they learned the hard way. Of course, that install is about dead anyway.

[Andrea_R]

LOL
On HSJ, I told them the delete blog button was indeed unrecoverable, even though I can undelete stuff for them.

[drmike]

LOL
On HSJ, I told them the delete blog button was indeed unrecoverable, even though I can undelete stuff for them.

That's what they're doing on wp.com I've noticed.  They tell folks that once they delete, it doesn't come back but they've done it.

[Luke]

Yep. As long as it's still in the db, it's recoverable.

I tend to leave blog deletions alone for a week or two. Just "in case" someone changes their mind.

[Andrea_R]

livejournal gives 30 days AND it tosses a message up there. I kinda like that aspect.

[ron_r]

gPHPEdit and Gimp.

<snip>

(I can't wait to see Ron's answer...)

What she said

[Thell]

LOL,

At least no-one mentioned notepad [edit: I meant to write edit (as in edit.com)]

I've gotta admit I did expect a little more tool usage from page developers; from wysiwyg and so much cvs, ftp, and ssh work that I had expected to see.  From what I can gather template, theme, and plugin design must be a process of code, upload, test...

I guess I envision being able to do the whole thing within a single environment.  The last couple of days led to the manual installation of mysql, apache, php, a virtual DNS, etc.  Then I uninstalled it all (I had a small glitch in the end that caused sessions to reset which was weird) and installed XAMPP, reset myEclipse up with PDT, Xdebug, subversive, remote system taget management terminal, and a few other fun plugins.  There is still a tad bit to do, but now I can script the whole show, preview, and start the debug  process from one spot.  What's really cool is being able to debug php embedded sql.  I still have tons to learn to use it all affectively, like the svn, mylyn (sp), trac setup.  Should be fun!

[drmike]

Last time I checked, the Vista version of Notepad wasn't a true ansi editor any more.  It was tacking on bytes onto the end of every file.

[Luke]

Oh, you wanted to know about the whole enchilada?
I was just thinking actual programs for coding or putting together a site.

ssh is of course a given, when you're running a ton of boxes (terminal).

Absolutely hate wysiwyg html editors. "Real" developers code from scratch.

CVS and SVN both. Although I use cvs more than svn. (MacCVSClient X).

And yeah, I've got all the bells and whistles available locally. Including an environment for RoR.

[Andrea_R]

From what I can gather template, theme, and plugin design must be a process of code, upload, test...

Pretty much. We have a local setup, and a couple of playgroudns on the server to edit themes live and to test plugins and code changes before rolling them in.
And sometimes I just edit the freakin' site.

Absolutely hate wysiwyg html editors. "Real" developers code from scratch.

Yeah really! When we taught the kids HTML, one went off to college and in the course of what's he's taking, there was a semester with an HTML course. They made him use a WYSIWIG. He almost cried.

[Luke]

My question would be...

How would "they" know he didn't use one? Unless they're looking for all the crap in it.

HTML design + wysiwyg = crap!

If the job's worth doing, it's worth doing right the first time. If you don't have time to do it right the first time, what makes you think you'll have time to go back and do it again?

[Thell]

drmike;
You've played with vista? ewww    I had to log on and do some troubleshooting for a wlan and printer setup; what a mess.  It sure look all perty and everything but I'd have to have to use it daily.

"Real" developers code from scratch. 

Yeah, yeah...  shouldn't you just be echoing to a file? 

And sometimes I just edit the freakin' site.

And your even so nice as to put a message up for users too!  What did it say; something along the lines of 'If you experience any problems it is because I'm working on the backend."?

[Thell]

wysiwyg has its' place in the whole scheme of things.  I think of it like a macro recorder...  I want to code something and don't know the codes so fire up a recorder, do whatever it is, check the code, get rid of the garbage, and figure out how to use it.

Just think, if it hadn't been for things like

Code:

saveas

|

Code:

webpage

and drag and drop design we'd still be looking at a small world of aol/compuserve pages.  IMHO

[Andrea_R]

How would "they" know he didn't use one? Unless they're looking for all the crap in it.

Cuz they are all at their desks with laptop in front following along to the lecture. 

They do have their place if you are learning. Sometimes. (Like when Ron develops Windows apps with MS tools, for example. Just easier to use their stuff and go along instead of fight with it.) In this case, Add just slogged through and did the course. Then when he next needed to use HTML, did it by hand like we showed him.

Yes, we *are* raising a generation of geeks... 

And your even so nice as to put a message up for users too!  What did it say; something along the lines of 'If you experience any problems it is because I'm working on the backend."?

Yeah, otherwise we get a flurry of "I got a weird error! What did I DOOOOO??" emails.

(Also, we've had a few minor bugs that do show up anywehre other than that setup, so we kinda have to do it live on there.

What can I say? I like to live on the edge. 

[Luke]

Heh, if I end up doing a big maintenance window on an MU site, I just replace my index.php with a temporary one.

Reminding of maintenance, and when it's expected to be complete.

Minor stuff I just upload.

[drmike]

We're putting our standard installs (ie wordpress, phpnuke, gallery, etc) into a svn setup located off site and running checkouts from there into client installs.  It's basicly a script that goes to the correct subdirectory and does a 'svn co' and then c alls the upgrade script.  It's only a couple of seconds to do that and seems to not slow down the box as much as having the script running cp commands.

One word of advice for that which we discovered very quickly.  The database login information?  Take it out of the config file and place it a seperate file with an include in the first file pointing at it.  Developers like changing the information in there so it got overridden on occasion.

I have a lot of problems with SSH as one of the schools plus the county libraries block that port and the upper band of numbers as well.

Have a vista dvd and I tried installing it on one of the old servers I have upstairs.  The main box is running xp 2ed with a dual boot to 98 2ed to play old dos games.  It's only a AMD 1800 with a gforce 2 so it's not that strong.

[ron_r]

(Like when Ron develops Windows apps with MS tools,

Actually, when editing aspx, I switch to the HTML source (text) editor. Drag one thing onto the page and the IDE reformats all the html and adds crap while at it.

[Thell]

DrMike,
Now that's some valuable information and a good tip.  I like XP although I think I liked 2K more, it's that familiarity thing and they made XP much more difficult to get things done with a PU instead of Admin.  Shoot sometimes when I runas I'm still told I have to be logged in as admin.

Ron,
That's exactly why I like some of these new development platforms; once you're done getting things to look the way you like you get to start the real job of whittling away all the excess fat.

[Luke]

I <3 OS X.   

But, I think that's a known factor by now.

[drmike]

I don't mind XP but I find myself breaking out old DOS games on occasion and some of them don't run on the fake dos clients made for xp.

[Andrea_R]

Oooo Doc, come over! The kids have been playing a bunch of Apogee games.

We've got every DOS game we had stored away on an extra drive.  It's great when the kids rediscover them. I also think many of the older games flex their logic skills a bit more.