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

[jvvw]

Atom amd SublimeText are the main contenders on a Mac if you arent going down the e.g MacVim route. ST not free but not ludicrously expensive, but Atom would probably meet your needs I expect. Can send you some links to good git articles but on my phone at the mo. You will want homebrew and npm installed too for pretty much any sort of development these days if you don't already.

[jvvw]

OK, at a computer. On the IDE front, I don't know anything about Python-specific IDEs so you may want to ignore my previous suggestions. There must be something nicer out there than Eclipse these days though.

Git - definitely use the command line. If you're just using it for yourself, you'll probably only need a tiny subset of what it can do: git init, git clone, git add, git rm, git commit, git status, git diff, git checkout, git push, git pull will probably get you a long way. This article is worth a read once you have used git a bit and want to understand it better :A Hacker's Guide to Git. There are some other useful articles out there, but if you're not going to be doing things like trying to sort out git repos that are in a mess, that is probably going to be sufficient

[drdoug]

Thanks, that's all really helpful! Testing is not properly on my list and should be. And yeah, code review is probably the way to really get better ... once I've done a bit more on my own. :)

[jvvw]

Oh and there are static analysis/lint type tools for most languages. That might actually be one of the easiest things to throw into your workflow and can easily reap big dividends.

[babysimon]

Not a huge amount to say but

[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.

[venta]

I use PyCharm for Python development. It's not especially lightweight but it is very feature-y. Decent git integration and will talk to your browser for Django projects (so it also handles html and js). Like most IDEs it will let you tinker with key bindings to match your editor of choice and, like most IDEs, gets the emacs bindings subtly wrong...

I feel I'm not really using it to its fullest extent, but I'm pretty happy with it. Free for 3 months eval, then a slightly weird pricing model depending whether you're using it for personal or corporate stuff.

[drdoug]

Oh, thanks, that looks worth a look. I see they also offer free/cheap for education people ...