Re: Looking for tips for moving dev environment from Windows to Mac

2014-01-08 Thread William Ray Wing
On Jan 8, 2014, at 9:11 AM, pyt...@bdurham.com wrote:

 Long time Windows developer making the move to Apple platform. My new 
 development environment is a 15 MacBook Pro with 16 Gb RAM and a 512 Gb SSD. 
 I'm totally new to the world of Apple hardware and software and am looking 
 for advice on what apps, utilities and hardware I should consider for my new 
 environment..

Welcome to the world of Macs, OS-X, and Darwin.

  
 Some early questions:
  
 1. Which distribution of Python to install (Python.org, ActivateState, 
 other?) and do I need to do anything special to avoid overwriting the system 
 copy of Python?
  

The answer to this is going to depend on exactly what you are intending to do.  
ActiveState (for example) has what may well be the best totally integrated 
package of libraries (GUI, numpy, mathplotlib, and such), but has a pretty 
expensive license if you are going to do commercial development.  Tell us more 
if you want a better recommendation.


 2. Text editor: Textmate, BBEdit, Emacs/VI, or other?
  

At the risk of setting off a religious war; I use BBEdit (have used it for 
years, and have been very pleased with its speed, power, regular updates, and 
integration with the OS).  There is strong support for other editors on this 
list, I'm sure you will hear from supporters of vi, Emacs, and Vim.

 3. Multiple external monitors: Any recommendations on monitor specs/models 
 for 2 external monitors for a MacBook?

I use Apple monitors, but that's strictly personal.

  
 4. Best visual diff utility for Mac?

BBEdit has a nice built-in diff with side-by-side scrolling windows.  When 
combined with its code-folding, multi-file search, and built-in python support, 
it makes a nice package.

  
 Any other gotta have Mac apps, utilities, or hardware accessories you would 
 recommend?

Two external disks.  One dedicated to TimeMachine for continuous backups of 
code as you write it, and one dedicated to either CarbonCopy Cloner or 
SuperDuper.  Whichever you choose, set it up to do once-a-week clones at say 
2:00 AM Sunday.  Modern Mac's are just as hard to crash as any other modern 
UNIX-derived system, and Mac laptops continue to top Consumer Reports list of 
trouble-free systems, but ANY hardware can develop problems and it pays to be 
paranoid. 

Again, welcome.

-Bill

  
 Thank you!
 Malcolm
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Re: Looking for tips for moving dev environment from Windows to Mac

2014-01-08 Thread Chris Angelico
On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 2:45 AM, William Ray Wing w...@mac.com wrote:
 Two external disks.  One dedicated to TimeMachine for continuous backups of 
 code as you write it, and one dedicated to either CarbonCopy Cloner or 
 SuperDuper.  Whichever you choose, set it up to do once-a-week clones at say 
 2:00 AM Sunday.  Modern Mac's are just as hard to crash as any other modern 
 UNIX-derived system, and Mac laptops continue to top Consumer Reports list of 
 trouble-free systems, but ANY hardware can develop problems and it pays to be 
 paranoid.

That's one option. I prefer to put anything that's even vaguely
important into a git repository, toss a remote clone of it onto one of
my servers, and commit and push every change. (And if it's important,
I'll clone that on another machine and pull, so I have a minimum of
three copies.) It's a bit more work, a bit more manual, but it gives
me versioning, backups, cryptographic hash checksums, notes (Why the
bleep did you do that, Past-Me?!?), and replication, all in one tidy
package. I don't know how much disk space you need for the two backup
systems you describe there, but the size of a full-history repository
isn't going to be huge, unless you're constantly editing big binary
files.

ChrisA
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Re: Looking for tips for moving dev environment from Windows to Mac

2014-01-08 Thread Bob Hartwig
4. Best visual diff utility for Mac?

opendiff.  I think it's part of xcode.

Regarding Python IDEs, I really like PyCharm.  It's written in Java, and
sometimes you can tell that by its performance, but it's very featureful
and has a great debugger, and your 16 GB box should support it nicely.

Bob




On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 8:11 AM, pyt...@bdurham.com wrote:

  Long time Windows developer making the move to Apple platform. My new
 development environment is a 15 MacBook Pro with 16 Gb RAM and a 512 Gb
 SSD. I'm totally new to the world of Apple hardware and software and am
 looking for advice on what apps, utilities and hardware I should consider
 for my new environment..

 Some early questions:

 1. Which distribution of Python to install (Python.org, ActivateState,
 other?) and do I need to do anything special to avoid overwriting the
 system copy of Python?

 2. Text editor: Textmate, BBEdit, Emacs/VI, or other?

 3. Multiple external monitors: Any recommendations on monitor specs/models
 for 2 external monitors for a MacBook?

 4. Best visual diff utility for Mac?

 Any other gotta have Mac apps, utilities, or hardware accessories you
 would recommend?

 Thank you!
 Malcolm

 --
 https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list


-- 
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Re: Looking for tips for moving dev environment from Windows to Mac

2014-01-08 Thread William Ray Wing
On Jan 8, 2014, at 12:26 PM, Bob Hartwig bobje...@gmail.com wrote:

 4. Best visual diff utility for Mac?
 
 opendiff.  I think it's part of xcode.
 
 Regarding Python IDEs, I really like PyCharm.  It's written in Java, and 
 sometimes you can tell that by its performance, but it's very featureful and 
 has a great debugger, and your 16 GB box should support it nicely.
 
 Bob
 

Malcom - I didn't mention IDE's since you didn't explicitly ask, but I use 
WingIDE (and no, I have NO relationship with the company), and have been very 
pleased by the company's responsiveness and help.  They have a free trial you 
can download and versions with three levels of capabilities, sophistication, 
and price.  These range from student (free) through personal and professional.

-Bill-- 
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