Tools of the Trade
Many of my colleagues in the Ruby on Rails community have been posting a “tools of the trade” blog post, covering their hardware and software preferences. Now that I am nearly Microsoft-free, I figured I’d update my list.
Hardware
- Apple Mac Pro 8-core Xeon, 10GB RAM, 320GB + 500GB 7200rpm SATA drives. This is my main box and the best computer I’ve ever owned. I use the 500GB drive as my Time Machine backup drive, but I am looking into other backup options as Time Machine is slow and there are anecdotal reliability issues, but now that I’m running Snow Leopard, I haven’t experienced any (not that I’ve attempted a restore yet either). I’m going to look into SuperDuper!
- Dual Dell FP1905 19″ LCD monitors. I hate them. The colors don’t match, no matter how I calibrate them, and they are too small for the type of work I do now. They also suffer from burn-in and ghosting. I’m considering a new Dell UltraSharp 3008WFP 30-inch, unless Apple announces something better for less money (ain’t gonna happen).
- External WD USB/FireWire hard drive for additional backups.
- M-Audio Fast Track Pro audio interface. I play guitar, and use this to record via the Shure SM-57 mic in front of my amps (not that this has anything to do with my work, but it’s cool nonetheless). My music gear is the subject for another blog entry.
- Apple iPhone 3G.
Software
- Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
- Mail.app
- Terminal.app
- Vienna RSS Reader
- Firefox
- TextMate
- Things
- VMware Fusion
- OpenOffice
- Adium
- Colloquy
- iTunes
- TweetDeck
- Skype
- Chax
- PostgreSQL
- Ruby on Rails
- Power*Architect
Hosting
[...] Tools of the Trade – Mark Richman chimes in on the theme. [...]
[...] his description of the tools he uses for development, sparking a flurry of replies (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and counting). Later this term, I may ask students in these projects (and their mentors) [...]