Ask HN: What is your development setup?

[geekam]

I was wondering what do folks use here these days. I am interested in knowing almost everything (from desks, chairs to software) that you use for building your products and achieving your goals. That is, your entire setup.

Also, if you could change one thing, what might that be?

Examples of some areas of input -

* PC/Laptop specs * OS * Major languages * Source version control * Editor(s) (with Plugins) * Servers, if any etc.

[keerthiko]

Circumstance: Traveling and working remotely for startup since I had to leave the US thanks to H1B visa lottery miss. Miss a cushy well-curated work environment, but the novelty of working in different parts of the world is interesting.

Software: Developing with Java+ADT/C#+Unity3D/Sublime3/Github. Test devices Nexus5 + 7 (KitKat). Google Hangouts for team-meetings/human interaction.

Hardware: MBA 13" 2013. Sometimes use Logitech G5 mouse. Sometimes the 22"Samsung external.

Edit: Tethered/hotspot-ified internet from the mobile carrier most likely to give me semi-reliable+cheap 3G on my Nexus5. Which is really not very reliable here in south India (BSNL).

Ergonomics: Fashioned a standing desk by putting a solid (brick-like) footstool on tiny desk in my parents' house. Perfect height. External monitor on a shelf next to the desk.

Geographic Location: Currently in tropical Kochi, south India, going to travel slowly to Singapore soon.

PS: Miss my i7/16GB RAM/GTX460/1900x1200 26"/CMStorm Quickfire desktop machine that I use for most of my sideprojects (art and gamedev). Left at my first travel stop out of the US =(

[mark_l_watson]

I mostly work remotely out of my house in the mountains, although I did work onsite for four months last fall which was fun (that was at Google). I like to meet my customers in person, but do most work in the comfort of my home with no commuting time lost. I really like it when customers travel to work with me out of my home.

Home office: MacBook Air with large external monitor. I have a very nice teak desk and an ergonomic chair. I don't use my office very often, perhaps 10% of my working time.

Home and on travel: MacBook Air, with a few lap desk alternatives I switch between.

I have five locations in our house and outside on our deck where I like to work. I find that switching working locations is pleasant to do, and provides a change.

Software: I use IntelliJ for: Clojure, Java, JavaScript, and Ruby development. I use Emacs for Haskell and Clojure development.

Parrot: of all the species of parrots available to augment my work environment, I chose a Meyer's Parrot. For ten years (so far) he has been a pleasant addition to my working environment. (As is my wife :-)

Thinking time: no computer and a yellow pad of paper and a comfortable pen.

I have a lifestyle business (consulting work and I always have a book project) that I spend about 25 hours a week on, averaged over the last ten years.

[mark_l_watson]

edit: missed something important: I use VPNs from Rimuhosting and Digital Ocean, lots of AWS services, and occasionally AppEngine. I spend a lot of time in remote SSH shells.

[geekam]

>>Software: I use IntelliJ for: Clojure, Java, JavaScript, and Ruby development.

I had no clue IntelliJ supports all of that!

Thanks for sharing Mr. Watson.

[japhyr]

What mountains? I live in southeast AK, and I love the mix of tech work at home, and good outings in the wilderness, completely detached from the tech world.

[sebcat]

Asus Zenbook UX31A (i7, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD), FreeBSD 9.2, C/Python/Java, svn, vim/Eclipse (no plugins)

I'm a dwm user. I usually have tmux with two sessions side-by-side in one dwm window and Eclipse in another dwm window (if I'm doing something Java related that day) and chrome in another dwm window.

I like the Zenbook.

[geekam]

I was just looking at Asus Zenbook UX31A comparing it to MacBook Pro. It is a nice machine and practically half the weight of MBP.

I have no idea what "dwm" is, though.

[drglitch]

Custom 'ultraquiet' box with: 32GB, i7, SSD as primary/active projects disk, backups/cold storage on spinning raid 1, key things backing to cloud, plus external drive for cold backups.

Monitors: 2x24" IPS dells vertical, with 30" dell IPS horizontal in center.

And of course a Das Keyboard for the hands and a HM Aeron rescued for $175 from a dead '99 internet startup!

I found this setup to be perfect for two-up windows of code plus email/browser for reference, plus output of what im doing.

Most of time is spent in python/web. Also lots of manual (excel) data analysis, visual studio, and db-related things.

For travel, an old-ish 11" MBA, which I absolutely love.

Aside from the monitors, the setup is actually a lot cheaper than one might think - e.g. raided HHDs, video card, etc are all reused from old machines, 24" monitors are 7 and 4 years old, respectively, etc.

[drglitch]

Replying to myself, but for those who haven't tried Python Tools for Visual Studio - http://pytools.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=PTVS%20Installati... - take a hard look at it. Once you get it working (which is a bit annoying with flask), its a beauty for debugging complex object mutation/state problems, etc

[geekam]

>>Monitors: 2x24" IPS dells vertical, with 30" dell IPS horizontal in center.

This setup requires a huge desk or system to hold it, doesn't it?

[deckiedan]

Work: Home built standing desk, Kensington Trackball w/scrollwheel, MS Ergonomic 4000 keyboard, second el cheapo screen, iMac 27" (2008), Mavericks. Latest Vim, git, and virtualbox. Virtualbox machines all provisioned w/ ansible, and simply rolled back manually rather than futzing around with anything more complex.

Home: Second hand ikea desk, Samsung chromebook running Chrubuntu/awesomewm. TypeMatrix Keyboard, wowpen-joy vertical mouse. latest vim. git.

Mostly all coding in python/flask. Also plenty of BASH, JS, and the usual HTML/CSS.

At home, I'd really like a more powerful computer & bigger screen. One day. Perhaps soon.

At work, I'd really like a TypeMatrix Keyboard, or a TruelyErgonomic (Or Kinesis Advantage...).

At home and work, I'm using the 'Workman' keyboard layout.

[alexmic]

Hardware: Mac Air 13'' with 27-inch Thunderbolt Display, WASD keyboard (love it!), Magic mouse, Beyerdynamic DT 770 headphones.

Software: Sublime Text for code and blog posts. Vagrant with Virtualbox/VMWare Fusion for local VMS with Ubuntu 12.04/Debian Squeeze. Python, JavaScript and lately Go. Github for repos.

Servers: AWS at work, Digital Ocean/AWS at home.

Location: Stockholm.

Other things: Cheap IKEA desk/bad chair at home, cheap IKEA desk/better chair at work, Spotify, 1Password, Dropbox, Skype, Hangouts. Screenhero for remote-debugging customers.

Like to have: A better chair, I'm starting to feel the pain.

[shocks]

Work: Macbook Pro, 15" retina, 2.7Ghz i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD. Home: i7 3770k@4ghz, 16GB RAM, 2x GTX 670, 512GB SSD, 7TB hdd

Monitors: 2x 27" Dell IPS for work and 1x 24" TN, 2x 17" at home.

OS: Everything.

Keyboard: Kinesis Advantage Pro at work, Ducky Shine I at home.

SVC: git. :)

Editors: vim, with my vim config found here: https://github.com/wridgers/vimto

Env: Virtual machines (VirtualBox) managed by Vagrant and Chef.

[geekam]

So you have a PC at home? Those Dell LED monitors are really nice.

[Su-Shee]

PC specs: anything which can run ssh and is at hand when I need it

OS: Any Unix/Linux will do

Source/Version Control: Whatever is used where I have to do some work

Editors: vi(m), no plugins

At the end of the day, I really only need some ssh, screen, a halfway decent shell, any versioning and a vi.

Also: Pen and paper to take notes and ANY simple GUI to run a browser is appreciated.

If I can have it, I'll take it all in UTF-8, please. :)

[monk_the_dog]

Main Development Hardware: * i7-3930 @ 3.2 GHz/16 GB Ram/240 GB SSD/1 TB HD * NVidia GeForce GTX 680 (For CUDA programming) * 24" 1900x1200 Dell monitor on LCD Arm * Quickfire Keyboard * KVM Switch (for linux/mac secondary systems)

Software: * emacs (in evil mode/development wiki in org-mode) * zsh/tmux/git/cmake * 99% of time programming C++. Compilers: Visual Studio 2013 (main)/Clang (secondary)/gcc (secondary) * Windows 7 (main)/Linux (secondarily)/Mac (secondarily)

If I could change one thing? Faster compile times!!!! Anything that would improve turnaround time would be a huge productivity boost for me. I still think C++ is the right language for my project (vision related), but sometimes I dream about using a language with blazing fast compiles.

[lgieron]

>I still think C++ is the right language for my project (vision related)

Interesting. What is the advantage to C++ in the context of CV that outweights the long compile time for you?

[eric_bullington]

Hardware: i5 + 32 GB of RAM and SSD drive. 24" monitor

IDE: Vim, bash, tmux; I have started using Qt Creator when I do Qt projects and I actually like it.

Production: traditionally AWS but experimenting with Digital Ocean.

Major languages: Python, C, and JavaScript (some C++ with Qt) but also experimenting with Go, D, and Dart

[varjag]

Two vertical 27" displays on a Dell workstation running Ubuntu x64. Vertical is a great setup if you primarily read code and reference materials. Four virtual screens are mapped on those, the primary being a browser on one display, and fullsize terminal window on the other.

A dedicated development server box running several chrooted systems in a tmux session on Ubuntu x64. I'm in embedded and need to use toolchains of different vintage for legacy products, some available only in x32 flavors with library requirements from GWB 1st term era. The box handles my Hg repos which are backed up nightly to tapes in two company branches.

A Dell 13" laptop with Windows, mainly for company's time reporting system which is Windows only, and for occasional travel.

[iamwithnail]

Macbook Air running OSX 10.9. Git through Bitbucket/SourceTree Webfaction for servers (MySQL) Python and Django.

At home I have a desk stuck in one end of the kitchen with 2x22" monitors and a 19" widescreen, ergo keyboard and mouse, which is for 'serious' dev sessions (or where I"m troubleshooting.)

Main IDE is AptanaStudio3, as it was literally the first 'proper' IDE I could get to work/make sense on the mac.

If I could change one thing? Have a machine I didn't need to plug in (2x USB, power, 2x monitors) everytime I sat down to use it - can't I just have a desktop and laptop that sync perfectly? No? Oh well.

[abengoam]

Self built pc (E8400, 8GB, 128GB SSD) which I will upgrade in the next year or so. Two 24" monitors, thinking about upgrading to two 27".

Windows host, running VirtualBox images with Linux Mint. I run several images, each major project in a separate VM.

Almost 100% Clojure development.

SVC: Git mainly.

Editor: Eclipse + Counterclockwise.

For services, I use mostly Heroku and Github.

The best improvement I had in the last years was to buy a corner desk (such as this http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60251335/ ) instead of a regular desk. It's miles ahead in comfort.

[rudimk]

A Dell Inspiron, Intel i5, 4 GB RAM with 1TB worth of disk space. I run Windows 8.1 Pro - love the clean look. I use Vagrant for coding - got different boxes for the different projects I work on. 2-3 boxes for coding on Flask(Python), Docker(Go) and various computational math tools(Numpy, Scipy, Octave, Sage, Julia, R, F#, Haskell) for MathHarbor, one box for some consulting gigs using Rails, and another for hacking on IPython. Use Git for VC. Sublime Text 3 is my editor of choice, but I don't use any plugins, for now.

If I could change one thing..that'd be the machine itself. Would love a Macbook.

[FireBeyond]

Hardware: Late 2013 iMac 27", 3.5/32/512, and Thunderbolt Display. Early 2013 rMBP 15", 2.7/16/512. On my desk, Apple Wireless, Magic Trackpad and Mouse, use Synergy so I can use the one set between both computers. Audioengine A2+ speakers. Polycom IP phone

Desk: Ikea Galant.

Software: Git (work) and Mercurial. Rails (work) and Python. PyCharm, Sublime Text 3.

Servers: FreeNAS with 12TB of storage, i7 950/24GB/2TB as a Docker host. Production environment is Rackspace Cloud and Amazon S3.

[icebraining]

4GB ram, i5 CPU, 120GB SSD, 15" + 19" monitors with Ubuntu 12.04

Python (and XML, alas)

Bazaar, Eclipse with PyDev, Vim. Awesome as a WM. Google Apps for chat, email and calendar. rxvt-unicode as the terminal, zsh as the shell.

Servers: Ubuntu 12.04, Nginx, custom Python app server, Passenger for a third-party Rails app. Ansible for deployment, Upstart for process management.

Oh, indispensable: redshift[1], particularly in the winter.

[1] http://jonls.dk/redshift/

[ladybro]

Redshift is wonderful. Came from OS X and couldn't get f.lux to properly work on Ubuntu 13.10 in the first few days and Redshift was what saved me from switching back. Once you live with it, you can't live without it.

[RBerenguel]

* Macbook Air Late 2013 (13", i7, 8 GB RAM, 128 GB HD + external USB3 HD) * Mac OS, on rare occasions for fun, Plan9 * Emacs, with a relatively large assortment of plugins (specially evil and gnus), occasionally Acme * Mercurial for work, git for personal stuff * Go, JavaScript, C, R, Lisp, Awk, Python, and lately playing with APL * Any chair that supports me and any desktop that is not very high

[kbar13]

    * retina macbook pro
    * topre keyboard (http://elitekeyboards.com/products.php?sub=topre_keyboards,rf104&pid=xf01t0)
    * 27" Monoprice monitor (http://www.monoprice.com/Product?p_id=10509&seq=1&format=2)
    * Apple magic trackpad
    * Linode running Archlinux
    * iTerm2
    * vim

[martin-adams]

Surface Pro 2 (256GB SSD, 8GB RAM)

2 x 1920x1080 monitors (one via displaylink, other via USB) + Surface Pro screen

Windows 8.1

Virtual Box running:

- Ubuntu

- Apache or Nginx (depending on project)

- PHP or Node.js (depending on project)

- MySQL, MongoDB, Redis (depending on project)

- Samba network share

PhpStorm (running in Windows to Samba) & vi in Ubuntu

MySQL Workbench & MongoVue

Node with Less compiler

Bitbucket

TortoiseGit

Amazon EC2, S3 & RDS

Putty

Spotify

Experimenting with Cloud 9 for Node & PHP projects

If there was one thing I would change, it's hiring someone and delegating. I'm the bottleneck now, not my tools.

[RossM]

How are you getting on with that? I do similar stuff, and love the idea of just docking in a tablet rather than a full laptop. I assume battery drops pretty quickly while running VMs?

[jyothepro]

Hardware: 13" Macbook Air(2012), Samsung 21" monitor, Apple bluetooth keyboard and trackpad

Software: XCode, Coda2, TotalTerminal, bitbucket, github

Server: Parse, DigitalOcean

Ergonomics: Yet to buy a ergonomic chair and standing desk. Currently using a normal a chair with wheels and placed a bunch of boxes on the table for standing desk (temp solution)