A typical programmers toolbox | Hacker News Reader

A typical programmers toolbox

jeremymorgan.com

21 pointscelticbadboy17 comments

All of a sudden it occurs to me that two people can be called 'programmer' and do radically different things. Surely the typical programmer's toolbox is: an editor, a compiler/interpreter/magic lisp box/whatever, and possibly a debugger.

similar to my toolbox, as an embedded engineer, the number of compilers that I have on my computer is about 8 installation for various different micros, along with this is the same number of debuggers.

Don't forget a version control system.

I think the title should be "A typical .NET/Microsoft programmers toolbox", as most of the tools listed are useable by MS devs. Case in point, I'm a web developer and I don't have/need most of these in my working laptop (an mba11).

I use none of them. Maybe it should be renamed as a windows programmer's toolbox.

... really? All I use is Sublime, Terminal, and Google Chrome.

Exactly. An editor, a shell and a browser is all you need.

I feel sorry for all MS devs who have to use so many platform-specific tools.

A shell and all the tools that come with it; grep, sed, awk, diff, sort, uniq, comm, paste, join, cut, find, ... :-)

> An editor, a shell and a browser is all you need.

That's great that those are all you need, but they aren't all I need. I wouldn't be able to do the work I do with only those tools. And you wouldn't be able to do the work I do with only those tools either. :-)

Not comparing the value of my work or yours or our skills in selecting and using tools, just saying that the work we do is quite different, and requires different tools, even though we may both be called programmers.

> I feel sorry for all MS devs who have to use so many platform-specific tools.

Don't feel sorry. I'm not even an MS dev these days and I have a very lengthy list of tools I use routinely. (See elsewhere on this page.) And I like it that way: I'm happy that there are so many great tools available to me.

Don't forget about git or any other form of version control.

OK, here's my list, just the things I use frequently in my programming work and not all the other apps I have installed:

- 3Dconnexion 3DxSoftware (3D mouse driver)

- 7-Zip

- ActiveState Komodo IDE

- Araxis Merge

- AutoHotkey_L

- Camtasia Studio

- Corel PaintShop Pro X5

- Evernote

- Everything (fast disk search)

- Eye-One Match (display calibrator)

- Fiddler (debugging proxy server)

- FolderSizes 6

- Git and various git clients (none I'm crazy about)

- Google App Engine

- Google Chrome (and Canary)

- Google Earth

- GraphicsMagick

- HM NIS Edit

- iDisplay (use Android device as extra display)

- ImageMagick

- IntelliJ IDEA

- JetBrains ReSharper

- JKLmouse (my keyboard home row mouse control program)

- Manifold System (GIS)

- MarkdownPad

- Microsoft Office 2010

- Microsoft Visual Studio 2012

- Mozilla Firefox

- Nullsoft Install System

- PaymoPlus (automatic time tracking)

- pdfsam (PDF split and merge)

- PostGIS

- PostgreSQL

- PuTTY (just for Pageant to use with git)

- Python (several versions)

- Quantum GIS

- Ruby

- Safari

- SciTE4AutoHotkey

- StorageCraft ShadowProtect

- Sublime Text 2

- Take Command

- TortoiseGit

- TortoiseHg

- TypeScript

- UEStudio

- UltraMon

- VanDyke Software SecureCRT and SecureFX

- VistaSwitcher (better Alt+Tab menu)

- VMware Workstation

- WebDrive

- XML Marker 2.1 (great editor for JSON as well as XML)

- Zeus for Windows (Go IDE)

I find there's very little that is typical about programmers other than in an abstract way. Compilers/editors/etc.

It largely depends on the domain in which they are working, and their own preferences to the tools the use.

Seems more like "A typical Jeremy Morgan Toolbox". Most of that would be superfluous for being typical in the general sense of a text editor, a reader of some sort, and an execution environment.

This should be renamed to "My typical programming toolbox"

Except for Skype (I'm moving to google talk very soon tho) I don't use any of these tools. And I highly doubt anyone on HN use any of it as well :P

- Google.com (and stackoverflow.com that's mostly reached via google search queries)

- Sublime Text 2

- Gtalk+Google Hangout

- Gmail

- Decent Operating system with decent package management and shell (for example ubuntu + apt-get + bash)

- Git

- Google Chrome

- Cloud

- HackerNews

I'm surprised no browser has made the list. Though odds are it's Internet Explorer.

Maybe, a (typical programmer's) toolbox.

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