My Tools of Trade

I saw this post by Mike Gunderloy where he tells us what cool software a Rails developer uses, so I decided to make a list of my own. I guess I can be called an amateur developer because I can't really have a job yet and I do it just for my personal enjoyment.

Hardware

I don't have much to say in this part. I own an Apple iMac ( a newer version came out this week you might want to give it a look ) and an ASUS F3Jc ( which, I guess, is kinda old ). I also got an Xbox 360 and a PSP Fat. Besides those I also own:

- Extra RAM for the iMac ( 4 GB ) and the laptop ( 2 GB )
- Primary external hard drive is a Prestige Portable Hard Drive 500GB from IOMEGA
- Secondary hard drive is a 320GB Portable Hard Drive from IOMEGA as well.
- Apple Wireless Keyboard. This beauty is my main keyboard, it's small, functional and beautiful. I can handle pretty much any type of keyboard but I really like this one.
- A4Tech X7 is my mouse. I have it for 2 years. It was bought when I was an hardcore gamer because it had a triple click feature.

Both HDD's were really cheap and they haven't failed me.

Software

The list is not in any kind of order. I just added the ones common with Mr. Gunderloy and then my own apps.

- Safari - The program I use most. I spend most of my time on the internet but when I'm doing some web programming ( rarely ) I use Firefox for debugging.
- TextMate - I never used an IDE very much so this is what I like, it never disappointed me.
- Eclipse - When I'm doing some heavy Java stuff I feel more comfortable in using Eclipse than any other IDE or editor.
- NewsFire - I read many, many blogs and this is my RSS reader of choice. I used to have Vienna installed as well but I prefer this one.
- Mail - This is my primary mail reader. It's not very good but I find it light and functional. It also handles lots of e-mails really well, I never had slowdowns or any kind of crash. Besides, it's built in.
- Terminal - Linux in OS X just like in fairy tales. What else can I ask for?
- MarsEdit - This is what I use when blogging. The Blogger interface is very, very ugly and not functional at all on Safari. It is also ugly but really functional.
- Navicat - I do a fair amount of database configuration and this is what I use.
- GitX - The only native OS X GUI for git I've found. It works but I mostly use the terminal.
- Pixelmator - I avoid Photoshop because I don't have time to learn it os this little program is where I spend most of my design time.
- Cyberduck - There are a lot of FTP clients for MAC, this is just one of them.
- Evernote - Where I drop most of my fixed notes. I guess I use it as a final destination for notes.
- Notational Velocity - Here is where the heavy note duty happens. I drop every bit of information I want to keep in here and organize it, if I think that the note will be useful later I send it to Evernote and give it nice formatting.
- Balsamiq Mockups - When I feel like doing mockups instead of just taking notes this is what I use.
- SQLite Manager - SQLite databases are a big deal these days. This GUI is not great but it works.
- Quicksilver - The most crucial app on my system. I use it to launch apps, move files, mail files, etc.
- Skype - For PC-to-PC voice communication.
- Adium - For MSN. MSN is the service we mostly use chatting in Portugal, I think it sucks :X
- LimeChat - For IRC. There are only a few IRC clients for MAC and this is my favourite.
- DropBox - What I use to host my files.
- Tinderbox - Yet another note taking application but this one is mostly for diagrams. It's SO UGLY but it works really, really well.
- VMWare Fusion - There are still some apps I miss from "gud ol" Windows like Visual Studio so I give the virtualization job to the VMWare folks.
- WhatPulse - This is one just for fun. I like to keep track of how many keys I press on some kind of project.
- Twitter - Not really a website but one of the websites I use most.

New blog theme!

Today I decided to give our little blog a new face.

I'm just using a plane old Blogger template that just looks good, simple and it's very very light and confourtable to use.

I'll keep this one for some time untill I find anything better ( really like this one though ).

Yeah that's it. PEACE!

Python Books

So this weekend I decided to take a look at some Python books that I found and there are two that I'd like to recommend.

Python is a very easy, useful and productive programming language, most of the big fat enterprises ( like Google and Yahoo ) are using it as a server side scripting language and some has standalone programs ( not so many though ). You can use DJango to make nice websites, Twisted for some nice network programming and Tornado Web Server, the FriendFeed engine, that became open-source when Facebook bought it.

First, I would like to tell you about "O'REILLY's Learning Python". This books is simply great! I have some experience with Python but this book amazed me, you can easily pick it up as a complete noob and if you're experienced programmer you can skip a few chapters and you'll find some interesting stuff that you might not know. The book is quite large ( 1214 pages, the 4th edition ) but you can skip a few parts that are not that interesting.

Second, "Dive Into Python", a free e-book. If you check the website you'll see that it says "for experienced programmers" although I do not really agree with this statements. There are some parts that are really hard to understand and some that are just basic. You should have a programming past to read the book for easily comprehension though ( but you don't need to be a suppa L337 pro ).

These books are really good, they're very well written and they're easily understandable ( from a language/grammar point of view, and I'm a 14 year old Portuguese! ).

My next task would probably be learning Erlang because I'm quite fascinated with CouchDB and the language it self seems interesting, I'm not sure though, might also try some Java ( I know it's pretty much dead.... )