I became aware of Emacs in college but stuck with Vim. I was naive and thought no one used Vim except me. I felt proud using something “hackers” used, as if choosing a text editor made me special. Little did I know that switching to Emacs would fundamentally change how I approach programming.
I've been using Git for a few years now, and while it's an amazing tool, the command-line workflow can be tedious. How many times have you done this?
$ git status
# On branch master
# Changes not staged for commit:
# modified: app/controllers/users_controller.rb
# modified: app/views/users/show.html.erb
# modified: config/routes.rb
$ git add app/controllers/users_controller.rb
$ git add app/views/users/show.html.erbAll that typing! Especially when you have deeply nested file paths. I recently discovered a tool called SCM Breeze that solves this problem elegantly.
As an Emacs user who spends most of my day in this editor, I've always felt a disconnect when it comes to blogging. I have to leave my comfortable editing environment, log into WordPress through a browser, deal with the web interface, and hope I don't lose my work if the browser crashes or my connection drops.
More importantly, I'm an occasional blogger who often gets ideas while working, but I feel uncomfortable opening my blog's admin panel during work hours. It's too visible, too distracting, and frankly looks unprofessional even if I'm on a break.
I've been a bash user for years. It's the default on most Linux systems and Mac OS X, and it works fine. But I kept hearing about Zsh (Z Shell) and how much better it is – better tab completion, better history searching, more customization options.
The problem is that Zsh is intimidating to configure. The configuration file can be hundreds of lines long, and getting it right requires deep knowledge of shell scripting.
Every developer needs a good text editor. TextMate on Mac, Notepad++ on Windows, gedit on Linux – there are plenty of choices. But there's one editor that stands out: Vim.
Vim (Vi IMproved) is everywhere. It's on every Unix system, every Linux server, every Mac. SSH into a server and Vim is there. It's fast, powerful, and once you learn it, incredibly productive.
If you're a web developer, you're probably using Firefox. While Internet Explorer still dominates market share, Firefox has become the browser of choice for developers. Why? Extensions.
Firefox's extension architecture allows developers to build powerful tools that integrate directly into the browser. These extensions can inspect HTML, debug JavaScript, test CSS changes live, and much more.