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Tech Environment

I’m sometimes asked which tools I use for a particular job, so here goes:

  • At home I work on a Dell XPS Laptop with a dual boot setup of Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 8.1. When developing I usually hook-up a small external screen.
  • I use Eclipse, with the Aptana extension installed for Java and PHP programming. I like the fact that I can use the same editor on both Linux and Windows, and for C, Java, Python and Web development. I also use Microsoft Visual Studio for C#, and PyCharm for Python development. For smaller editing tasks I use Notepad++ on Windows and Vim on Ubuntu.
  • Chrome is my default browser (although I did use Firefox for a while). I especially like the developer tools.
  • I use Mercurial and Git, combined with Bitbucket and Github respectively, for version control. Currently I am most comfortable with Mercurial.
  • Just about everything that isn’t code related goes in my Dropbox folder, of which I’m a big fan.
  • I use cloud based tools, especially Google’s, for as much as possible. I like the portability they provide and in general trust ‘them’ to look after my data more than I trust myself!

Top 10 consumer software tools:

  1. Gmail
  2. Google Drive
  3. Dropbox
  4. LastPass
  5. Pocket (saving articles I come across on the web for reading on my iPad later)
  6. Evernote (longer notes, recipes etc.)
  7. Google Maps
  8. Feedly (RSS feeds)
  9. Goodreads
  10. Rotten Tomatoes

Other gear:

  • Google Nexus 4
  • Kindle Paperwhite
  • Panasonic Lumix FT4

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