zahnster

Last week I finally caved and bought a bigger hard drive for my laptop. I opted for the top of the line, 320 gigabyte Western Digital drive – at $109, I couldn’t refuse (it’s amazing how cheap these things are nowadays). Instead of doing the classic mac os migration, I decided that a fresh start with a clean os install would be the best avenue. It would allow me to really optimize my computer, utilizing all I’ve learned in the last year about optimizing a development environment.

I figured I’d document the apps, libraries, and utilities that I install, partly for self-reference, and hopefully for informing others of some of the essentials for professional web development (on a mac). I aim to be very specific about what I install, and oddly minimalistic considering all the space I’ve gained.

So, lets start with the main apps. There are a few must-haves, including the super powerful text-editor TextMate, s/ftp dream Transmit, hacker must-have Quicksilver, and who could forget the only svn gui worth mentioning, Versions. Last but not least, the essential web browser, Firefox and it’s various plugins (such as Firebug and the web developer toolbar). On the big expensive software side, it’s never a bad idea to have Adobe CS3 at your side.

Essential programs taken care of, there’s a few other things to install for a dev system to be complete. MacPorts is the key to most of these, including ruby / rails and it’s various gems, svn, php, and other processes you might need. Git is the only missing piece, but it can be installed fairly easily from source.

Now that I have these installed, I really feel like I have everything at my fingertips to start working. There’s a handful of other apps I will probably end up installing as time goes on, but these are the only ones absolutely necessary for efficient, happy programming.