The Tools I Use
December 01, 2008Time again to update the programming tools I use. Since I have moved on to PHP and doing iPhone Apps my toolset is highly changed from the last one.
I can't function without it, it's the best text editor on the Mac period, but it badly needs a rewrite as its performance on large files is abysmal. The bundle/plugin system is amazing and is what makes it such a great tool. There's even an editor on Windows - e - which is a shameless but likeable clone that supports the bundles natively.
I use TextMate for editing web stuff and php stuff and various bits of whatever text I need to work with. Other than editing big files (which is need for my iPhone app) it rocks.
Yes, I also own the competition (Version 9), mostly for editing huge files (which it eats for breakfast).
I'm using the pro version to allow me to easily manage local copies of my 10 or so Web entities. It supports MySql and Apache and PHP which are the basis of all my web apps now. It uses the same versions as on my dedicated server. Makes doing multiple PHP sites easy as pie.
I run a dedicated server at my ISP (which is recent) but I've been with these folks forever. They are totally great to work with.
Apple's venerable development environment that I am using for my iPhone projects and eventually ports to OSX. Argh I hate this with a passion! Yet its the only real choice (although you can sort of use TextMate for some things). The debugger (GDB) and its XCode shell are horrible and inconsistent. I swear at it every day (currently the debugger crashes every other launch of my iPhone app in the simulator, yet doing attach works every time, go figure).
It's the worst IDE I've ever used, and I've used them since 1983. Maybe someday Apple will build a brand new modern IDE from scratch (maybe base it on TextMate!). Oh well, it's an ode to Henry Ford ("you can have it in any color, as long as it's black").
Fireworks (Old version)
These are the graphics tools I use for web graphics and iPhone graphics. There is no one tool that fits all (no I don't own Photoshop, it's way too expensive).
I almost used git for version control but since I already had subversion working I decided to stick with it, my needs are not very complicated and it works. svnX is a decent enough GUI, although you have to use the command line to import a new project (as far as I can tell).
My FTP tool of choice for a long time. It works.
I use both Safari and Firefox (with Firebug of course) interchangeably. My MacBookPro has a windows partition for testing various IE versions. I use my MBP for iPhone development and my G5 for PHP development. Someday I can replace both with a shiny Mac Pro but that takes money.