Yesterday I talked about resenting setting up my development environment, and a lot of you chimed in with some really good tips!
A lot of you have automated your setups and I think that is really cool!
I am not sure why I never took the time to do that, maybe I am just lazy, but for now it doesn't really apply anymore because the pieces of advice that really stood out, that I later ended up taking where the "slim down" approach.
I have maybe a different perspective. I try to pick tools that I can mostly use as-is. There is always a little configuration, but if it gets to be a lot, I look for a different tool. Or maybe a similar end result can be achieved by using fiddly tools that can import/export their configuration easily and consistently.
Personally, I value high degrees of flexibility in the code itself, not as much in tools around the code. It seems funny to me when people want highly customizable/disparate coding tools but then use a framework in their code to avoid having to make choices about the real crux of their work. I prefer the framework approach for code tooling (by that, I mean something like an IDE vs text editors + a dozen plugins, each with their own configs) and the library approach for code.
And even with code tools, I try to use them as lightly as possible. Because they will change. A heavy investment in learning these tools will not likely reap a long term reward.
Comments like the one above really appeal to how I have been trying to live lately. The pseudo zen approaches of "chilling the fuck out" and "getting rid of all my bullshit" have really improved my quality of life lately so I decided to apply it to my dev setup.
I have officially dropped vim and with it all of its plugins in favor of VS Code.
So far I have only installed Prettier and a theme (Panda for the curious) on Code, I am trying to keep it pretty slim. Then I installed iTerm, Node, zsh, and Homebrew. Wish me luck! As my previous setup was way more complicated/custom so this is a bit bare bones to me... but I like it.
Top comments (6)
If you are willing to go with an IDE, then you might as well go all the way and use IntelliJ.
I freaking love IntelliJ Ultimate. It has first-class support for most programming languages that I've used (particularly PHP, JavaScript, Elixir, Rust, Bash, Java, and Dockerfile all have plugins). Typing in it remains responsive even when it's indexing. And, of course, the IDE itself is the product, instead of your personal data.
My only complaint is that the Elixir plugin can lock up the editor sometimes. Only the Elixir plugin; I've never had this problem with any of the others.
I’ve used webstorm a bit. I might try IntelliJ after giving VScode a decent shake.
I use VSCode for any project under 50 files or so, after that I bring out the big guns, IntelliJ. Webstorm for web or more specific ones like Idea.
For Go I use Goland full time.
To keep things automated and simple I use Docker for all the project dependencies that were poluting my system in the past, example: databases, UI admins for them, kafka, zookeper and so on.
I write the docker commands in bash files so I dont forget and commit them.
I avoid personalizing the tools and env, because I want to be able to code from more computers and environments. Only aliases I use are from the bash-it framework.
Coding from different computers and environments.
Well its even easier with Vim and such.
Just ssh into your own computer. That's it. No need to install anything on the other machine, be it Windows, Linux or MacOS. You can ssh into your shell and use Vim from there.
That's what I do at least.
Have a separate folder for all the git cloning so I dont spam my system with files, but so far SSH has be a life-saver for my day-to-day movement. Anywhere I go - pull up a bash, ssh into my ip, and that's it.
That is too limiting for me sorry. I work for different companies, projects and environments.
Working trough SSH is like using a shared hosting, prune to errors, good for small projects and so unsecure (your PC has all the private info and data of all your clients/employers).
Also I do not take Vim into serious, is good when typing books or editing configs but thats about it. As a professional developer I need a proper IDE.
I should really see if docker could solve some of my problems.