I was asked the other day what development environment I prefer and why.

Why is a hard question. Its mostly what I have been taught to use over the last few years and includes a collection of tools that are invaluable.

Im always adding and/or changing my development environment to suit the needs of whatever I am working on but it mostly consists of the following:

Hardware:

• Right now im working on a 2.4GHz Dual core AMD Athlon 64. Ive only got 1GB of RAM but it does the job. I gave my other gig stick away (for free) so that makes me a nice person.
• Ive got a double monitor setup. Any developer that tells you its un-necessary does not know what they are doing and needs a slap. Seriously though, double monitors are the way forward. Three would be the perfect setup but thats excessive and greedy. Documentation and browsers open on one, code open on the other.
• Wireless keyboard, wired mouse. But it makes no difference.
• UPS: Belkin un-interruptible power supply. Lasts 40min with everything switched on.

Software:

• Operating system is Windows XP (sp2) although I have Linux UBUNTU installed which I love using when I can.
• Eclipse with PHPEclipse plugin. PDT I will get around to trying one day. Development for PHPEclipse has pretty much ground to a halt so I will migrate away sooner rather than later. I have a few random Eclipse plugins installed but nothing that helps much with development.
• Browser of choice is Firefox. As a developer you should have other browsers such as Opera, IE (Of course) and Safari. The more the merrier.
• Firefox plugins: ColorZilla (great tool), British English Dictionary (corrects spelling), SearchStatus (Displays Google PageRank and Alexa ranking), Web Developer toolbar (YOU NEED THIS)
• FTP Client: I use FireFTP. Its okish...
• Image Editing: Adobe Photoshop (love it or hate it)
• Email: I use Mozilla Thunderbird. It is amazing.
• Other tools: UltraMon (Gives me multiple taskbars across both screens). Skype (Its good and cheap).
• Music: WinAMP. Cant live without it. Plus the Last.FM plugin to keep track of things.

Im always looking for new hardware/software that makes life and development easier so drop me a message if you think im missing something.

1. ColorZilla
2. Last.FM
3. Web Developers Toolbar
4. Winamp
5. Mozilla Thunderbird
6. Adobe Photoshop
7. Skype (VOIP)
8. Ultramon
9. FireFTP
10. SearchStatus
11. Firefox Add-ons: Dictionaries
12. Mozilla Firefox
13. Apple Safari
14. Opera
15. PHPEclipse
16. Eclipse PDT
17. Eclipse
18. Linux UBUNTU
19. Windows XP

Posted by epic at 14:28pm

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