My coding environment

I’ve been thinking about the things that I use to do my job. There’s the obvious things like a web browser (I like Safari but I use Chrome). A lot has changed since because I’ve gone from a job where writing code was most of my job at MarkLogic to a job where writing code is something that I might do in order to get something in my job done (at Redis).

As I settle in at Redis, I’ve been setting up my environment. It feels pretty similar to what I’ve used before although I don’t need any XML tools at all. I’ve never actually written down what I use nor have I really thought about justifying to myself why I use the tools I use.

The suite of software I actually use day to day has got smaller in many ways. By that, I mean that much much more of it lives in a browser these days, particularly at Redis. Apart from a browser, I don’t actually need any other software than the three (four if you count fonts) below.

Obviously (‘cos I am a techie), I use git, python, ssh and a whole slew of command line tools but I tend to think of those as the things I used in my working environment.

iTerm2

I’ve only just switched to iTerm2. I’ve been an Apple Terminal user for ever despite friends and colleagues telling me I should switch. I tend to use solarized light themes. I found one for iTerm2 on github.

Fundamentally, the panes are ridiculously useful when I’m looking at a cluster.

Visual Studio Code

Once upon a time I lived in vim. My fingers are still programmed to use it. It was the first thing I checked was installed on any new system I used.

A few years ago a colleague released VS Code integrations for MarkLogic in VS Code. At the time I was trying to get into using IntelliJ ecause it had a good MarkLogic plugin. But.. being that sort of person (geek/techie/whatever) I thought that I would try this new editor. I’m not a Microsoft fan (OK, I have always liked SQL Server and I made a fair amount of income from extending Visual Basic years ago) but it was worth a try.

Step forward a few years and it’s my primary editor whatever operating system I happen to be running. I’ve got the hang of its git integration too. That might actually end my love affair with Tower as a git client.

zsh & oh-my-zsh

I’ve used zsh for many years @Samoth talked me into trying when I worked with him at Cocoon Internet. Nowadays, I find that oh my zsh automates most of the customisations I used anyway.

There’s no real justification for using zsh except that “I’m used to it and productive with it”. But that’ll do.

Fonts

I’ve also got into the habit of using a coding specialised font with ligatures. I like Fira Code, ymmv. I use it as both my terminal and editing font.