Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

Reading the docs and example code for opensource libraries and tools I use when I get stuck, as opposed to trying to figure out how to use them myself. And using google to search for answers to question and heading to Stackoverflow if it's been answered there and reviewing all the answers offered.

It's a habit now, but it took me awhile to break my previous habit of thinking I could figure stuff out without help and I'm much more productive as a result.

As far as tools go, BBEdit is the one I use most.

- vim, but more of the hotkeys than vim itself for me (ex: idea vim). Productivity gains + always have a usable text editor in any env (ssh, local, etc)

- clean code book, to help know what good code looks like, and gives structure to shoot for, and gain opinion on why one way looks better than others, or not

I'm going to answer on the latter, because I can't say if I'm a much better programmer than, say 5 years ago (But I blame that to the fact that the product I develop is "frozen" and I don't do much than small bug hunting and / or forensics when something goes wrong; or "janitoring" as I refer to it nowadays).

In no particular order, these are the tools that over the years have made my life incredible easier and let me focus on the problem at hand, and not solving the problems I had to deal before solving the problems I had to solve:

1. Git. 12 years ago, I was the sole developer at my company, and I had to strong arm my boss (And company owner) to ditch CVS for Git. Probably one of the best company decisions I was responsible off (Being the next one getting the company on Slack)

2. xDebug. When I discovered xDebug (PHP) my life changed overnight. As I said I don't do much coding these days. When I was full on coding, I had hacked a way to be able to work with xDebug with a small class made specifically for debugging, that allowed me to do "code hot reload" until I hammered my code in place.

3. Any tool by JetBrains. I have a lifetime licence for PHPStorm 2016.x (You get that after paying the license for a year). And I currently am a paying customer of WebStorm. I plan to keep paying for it until I make it to the year, because then you get a lifetime license. I know IDEs and editors are bound for flame wars, but honestly, for people like me that are not really invested in getting an expert command of their tools, JetBrains gets you the most bang for your money right out of the box.

4. Virtual box, then Vagrant, and these days docker. Virtualization for me was the best way to fix the "but it works on my box" syndrome some 10 years ago. I discovered VBox and then vagrant, and I've been a happy customer for years. I've been eyeing docker for some time now and the quarantine gave me the time to investigate it on my own. With VBox / Vagrant I had the problem that when moving I had to move large archives for the different disks I had accumulated over the years. Now with docker I just need to move the data, the code, and the docker file that builds the container that I use. I also use docker to learn other things like node and python. For python I've been using Miniconda for some time, but I didn't like the way it handles - nor had the time to learn how to correctly - environments. Same with node and the node_modules hell. With both, I use small set up files where I store a default configuration so whatever package I get is saved on shared volumes on my machine, and the same on code. That way I decide what to share where, and getting rid of something is as easy as removing a folder.

5. Linux. I started learning me some Linux when I started this job 13 years ago, and over the years it grew on me. Last year my notebook disk gave up, and when I changed it I installed Debian on it. This year the same happened to my desktop box, and I did the same. Even thought there are programs that I do miss from Windows the reality is that many of them I can run with Wine, and the others get replaced for something else that is, if not better, at least on par with their Window counterparts. And I keep finding tools that are incredible awesome (Like mpv for video playing)