environment

Being a developer for a number of years now I've had a chance to experiment with a number of different working environments. I'd like to share details about my current choices with you here.

Operating System	Gentoo Linux
Web Browser	Firefox
Editor	Vim
Development Language	perl
Mail Client	mutt

operating system

During my university years ('93-'96) I realised that I really enjoyed working in a unix-like environment. So I invested in a 4CD linux set and set about installing linux. I can't clearly remember what I tried first, but I know that the CD at least had versions of RedHat and Slackware on it. I assume I tried both out, but it wasn't very long before I'd settled on Slackware. I've always enjoyed the hands-on approach that Slackware allowed me. It was sometimes more work than installing from RPMs, but overall I felt much happier.

I continued to use Slackware for almost 10 years. In 2003 I heard whispers of a strange new linux distribution - Gentoo. At first I didn't take much notice of it; I was happy with Slackware, and saw no reason to change. People began to talk about it more, and I started to get curious. The problem was I didn't have any spare machines to try Gentoo on.

As luck (!) would have it, the hard drive on my laptop started to make strange clunking noises. These noises didn't fill me with confidence, so I invested in a new hard drive for the beast. This was also the perfect opportunity to see what all this fuss about Gentoo was.

That was early 2003, and I haven't looked back. In fact I soon converted two other machines to Gentoo.

The thing I like most about Gentoo is that it's still very hands-on, like Slackware, but has an excellent from source package management system. You have to wait a little longer for things to compile before they are installed, but you end up with a nice optimised system at the end of the day.

web browser

The first web browser I can remember is a 0.x version of Mosiac in my first year at university. I guess that's given me an affinity with Mosaic/Netscape browsers. For a long time it was the browser to use if you used linux. When Mozilla was born, I moved to using it as soon as it became stable, and offered the same functionality that I was used to using in Netscape 4.7x.

When Firefox came along, and after numerous name changes, I made the switch from Mozilla to Firefox. The only component of the Mozilla suite that I used was the browser, so a switch to a broser-only application made sense. Over time Firefox has shown itself to be fast, reliable and incredibly useful (thanks to numerous plugins available).

editor

I spend 90-something percent of my time working with plain text, whether it's perl, html, or email. So why not use one of the most flexible and powerful text editors available?

A long time ago I used to use Jove, it was nice, did stuff, and didn't have that crazy "normal-mode / insert-mode / command-mode" stuff to worry about. One day a friend said, "Why Jove?!?! I'll tell you what, try Elvis for a day. If you don't like it you can go back to Jove." I tried Elvis for a day, and it was hard. I wasn't used to the vi-way. At the start of the next day I continued to use Elvis. I saw it's power.

So, I'd entered the land of vi-clones. I became happier. I'd always been mostly happy with Elvis, but never 100%. When someone showed me Vim I installed it and have used it instead of Elvis ever since.

Yes, the vi-way is different, but if you haven't already why not trial Vim for a day? You can even get a windows version of it! If your on a linux box with vim already installed start your journey now by typing vimtutor.

development language

I first programmed in BBC Basic. That was many moons ago. I must have been about 10 at the time. I used Basic because that was all I had available to me at the time, and machine code just looked mad.

Fast forward a few years to university, and I was being taught to program in C. C was fun to learn. C was also a lot of hard work. Worrying about pointers and memory allocation all the time made it difficult to get anything interesting written. I carried on working in C for a while.

On the sideline I dabbled in Delphi, and got dragged into learning Access VBA.

While I was in VBA hell, someone mentioned perl as a good choice for something I was thinking about working on (read about UglyLogs in the projects section). I didn't know any perl at the time, so I bought a couple of books, swallowed the information, and within 3 weeks I'd written my first perl script. [the version of UglyLogs mentioned elsewhere on this site isn't my original version. It's a complete rewrite that looks nothing like the original version.] Even better, it worked. Looking back, it wasn't my best piece of work. It did make me realise that perl was my preferred language. I used it as often as I could in my spare time, and after a year of hobby-perl I managed to get myself employed as a perl programmer.

mail client

I used to use Netscape Mail because it was there. It wasn't too bad to use. When I mentioned to someone (the same person who pointed me at Elvis) that I was a little disillusioned with the bloaty feeling of Netscape Mail he pointed me at mutt. It might only be console based, but in my opinion that's one of it's selling points.

Chisel