My Development Environment on OS X

I have had development environments on all the major platforms (Windows, varying flavors of Linux, and OS X) and I have to say, OS X wins by a mile. You can cobble together a relatively similar environment on Windows and Linux, but it never quite feels like it works right. On OS X, everything fits together nicely.

I had taken a few screenshots to help demonstrate, but they don’t do it justice. So I took a video with my new Kodak Playsport. You can’t really *read* what’s on the screen, but you can get the idea. Choose 720p for more clarity.

Software Featured

• RubyMine 2
• VIM w/ NERDTree Addon
• iTerm for full screen terminal
• Sequel Pro

I use Spaces to organize.
Space 1

• Browsers (Safari and Firefox with Firebug and Firecookie)
• AdiumX (IM)
• Colloquy (IRC)
• RubyMine

Space 2

• Terminals – I keep the project open in NERDtree so I can continue to work even if I’m watching a process (i.e. migrations, tests, or DB Import) I can still work. In this video I’m running a test db import and cloning a svn repository in git.

Space 3

• Sequel Pro – I highly recommend this piece of software. I can get around the MySQL command prompt as quick as the next guy, but most of the time, I can get the job done in a nice UI, with plenty of convenience features.

Space 4

• Mail
• Calendar

I think this system works very well and is pretty efficient, once you get used to switching back and forth between RubyMine and VIM anyways. Switch to 720p for more clarity.

Nifty Git “Trick”

Git’s branching facilities are awesome. We all know that. However, if you’re like me, I don’t always have the foresight (or discipline I guess) to always create a branch before I dive head first into a refactor.  Then I learned about Git’s “stash” command’s ability to create a branch from what you’ve stashed, leaving  your current branch untouched. How awesome is that? Check it out:

1. Make some changes. Stage them (stash stashes staged changes)
2. run “git stash”
3. run “git stash branch branchname” where ‘branchname’ is the name of the branch you want to create

And Viola! You know have a branch created from the changes you stashed. You can then use the standard merge facilities to merge that branch back into the one you were working on (or any other branch for that matter).

Isn’t that f’ing cool?

Google Wave: UX Mistake #1

So I got a Google Wave invite this morning. My first reaction, in all seriousness, is “uhhh”.  I know this is just “preview” level software, but let me start by providing some quick feedback:

UX Mistake number 1:

Putting text that seems like it should be actionable under the navigation, and having it be unnavigable is terrible, terrible design. What am I supposed to do with this information?  I’m off to do real work now.