What's your essential tools for every programmer?
1. vi/vim/MacVim - it simply becomes second nature, without the laborious keystrokes of the "major competitor".
2. Command line stuff: grep, tr, awk, find, od.
3. Pencil and paper. Draw a picture.
"Never cut what you can unravel." - Joseph Joubert
Exactly. Unix was the original programmer’s workbench and still is.
Programming should mostly happen between the ears. I do most of my work thinking and writing notes, diagrams, and pseudocode on paper.
I cannot stress this enough to new programmers. Think before you code. When your hands are on the keyboard you should either be investigating an unknown system to figure out how it works, or you should be implementing that which you have already designed & built in your head.
If the code I am writing right now doesn't involve me poking at a system because I don't understand it and learning it, then at a guess, I would say I spend far more of my time thinking about the production code I will write than writing the actual production code. Hands on keyboard for hours at a time is a sure sign you're working on a problem you don't really understand. It took me decades to come to that realization because many companies measure productivity by "number of hours of your butt in a chair multiplied by lines of code written."
In my current role I am considered one of the most productive developers on the team. I am physically at the keyboard writing code or debugging code for maybe three hours a day.
Measure twice, cut once is a good guideline.
I learned desk checking my code (and other people's code) early in my career when computer time was expensive and I had to wait to run my code. I still do a lot of desk checking. I find that process helps me understand the code and data structures better. After a while it becomes second nature, you can learn to "run" code in your head.
Karabiner Elements https://github.com/pqrs-org/Karabiner-Elements
Why: https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/macos/macos-apps/karabiner
very interesting tool
I run all three major OS for development work. Windows 10 is my daily driver, but not used for everything. Today, even though I am at two machines running Windows, both have a Linux OS running in a VM that I am using predominantly for today and probably the next several weeks whilst I rebuild firmware images and create/update Linux device drivers for an embedded system.
Hardware wise: You can never have too much. I have a Windows workstation, a Surface Book 2 and a Macbook Pro, lots of monitors, keyboards, mice, tablets. A Linux server running Docker containers for various services, e.g. adguard, firewall, proxy server, gitlabs and mercurial, backup, and so forth. These are all optional, I could probably get away with just a powerful laptop if pressed.
Software:
VMWare Workstation Pro or VMWare Fusion, that permits access to Windows, Linux & macOS.
Visual Studio Pro on Windows
VSCode on Linux & macOS
SublimeText3
The full Jetbrains suite on all three platforms
Android Studio
XCode (macOS)
The various terminal tools, as mentioned by someone else.
OneNote for notes, installed on every computer in the house, and every tablet and my phone too.
A physical sketchbook/ruled notebook (half sketch paper, half is ruled pages) with two mechanical pencils, and a straight edge. I cannot emphasize a physical notebook strongly enough, even though I am dyslexic and disgraphic and have lousy handwriting and it makes my hands cramp, a physical notebook is invaluable.
Microsoft Office Lens for scanning physical notes and whiteboard sessions in to OneNote
OpalCalc on Windows, Soulver on macOS, Speedcrunch on Linux
Bitwarden with self-hosted server installed on all Windows Subsystem Linux on Windows
ConEmu for Windows
DirectoryOpus for Windows, PathFinder for macOS
WinMerge on Windows, Kaleidoscope on macOS. Though I also like Araxis Merge and Beyond Compare.
Tower (old version) because fuck you and your subscription model.
Synology Drive for file sync between devices
Synology Backup for backing up the machines
IDA and Binary Ninja for reverse engineering and diving in to binaries
I am sure there are things I am missing that I use almost daily but have slipped my mind. These tools make up my workbench and let me tackle a lot of different work, much like how my workshop contains many different tools for different aspects of woodworking, metalworking and other fabrication and maker-type tasks.
edit: blank lines because I forgot HN doesn't separate lines without it.