Every web developer uses his/her set of preferred tools. Here’s mine:
- Text editor: SublimeText 2, because it loads fast and I swear by its open by file name feature
- Computer: MacBook Air 13″, a decent screen size with good portability. I like working at cafés and this gadget fits my lifestyle.
- Browser: Chrome 18 or 19. I lost track of Chrome’s version, comes with Chrome is the excellent debugger I cannot live without.
- CSS generator: Less, because Less can be compiled by JavaScript on the client side. It’s easy to get started developing.
- Database engine: MySQL InnoDB.
- Database browser: Sequel Pro, never found a replacement for this. I’ve been using this for 3 years, by far the best.
- Revision control: Git or SVN. My vote is to Git but my company is still on SVN.
- Image editor: Photoshop. Embarrassingly I am one of those that will just launch Photoshop to make PNGs with alpha-transparency. There are probably better tools out there but I can’t get used to them.
- Programming languages: PHP for web development. JavaScript or Ruby on scripting automation. I still use Expect for a bunch of server-side tasks, I cannot move away from that still.
- Web server: Apache for development. It’s all because of PHP’s xdebug. My colleagues use .htaccess often too. I use nginx for production usually.
- Load profiling: Seige, it’s simple and reliable.
Other tools include:
- LiveReload 2 has been extremely convenient and it has been part of my workflow for months. I never looked back.
- Bash alias lets me quickly navigate through the trenches of my messy directories. I also use it to pull for Git quickly.
