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My Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Mac OS X (2011 Edition)

carpeaqua.com

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Re: My Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Mac OS X (2011 Edition)

#81

If Terminal.app feels like plastic scissors, you can try iterm2. It beats the crap out of Terminal in terms of configurability. https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2 http://iterm2.com/

And it's broken. Screen updates are way slower, and stream redirection plain doesn't work. Terminal app is pretty good.

This is odd, for me there is no lag on Lion when I hold down the backspace key. And what do you mean by stream redirection? That usually means this:

> echo "derp" > foo.txt

That has nothing to do with iterm2 and everything to do with bash or whatever shell you are using, I think.

Might you be confusing iterm2 with iterm? Iterm2 is a completely separate piece of software than iterm, it's not the second version of the same one.

Re: My Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Mac OS X (2011 Edition)

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's broken. Screen updates are way slower, and stream redirection plain doesn't work. Terminal app is pretty good.

This is odd, for me there is no lag on Lion when I hold down the backspace key. And what do you mean by stream redirection? That usually means this: > echo "derp" > foo.txt That has nothing to do with iterm2 and everything to do with bash or whatever shell you are using, I think. Might you be confusing iterm2 with iterm? Iterm2 is a completely separate piece of software than iterm, it's not the second version of the…

I mean things like 2>&1 or 2>/dev/null (redirecting error stream to stdout etc). This did not work for me last time I tried it. This coupled with significant lag when scrolling/listing huge dir, typing made me quickly abandon it. Terminal app does everything I really need and it's fast and reliable.

Re: My Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Mac OS X (2011 Edition)

#83
post #73
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For myself: With Alfred and a well-tuned Quicksilver, I can: * hotkey it open * punch in the minimum to identify the application I want (usually 1 or 2 keys, 3 for rarely-used ones) * hit enter and be done with it in well below 1/2 of a second. With Spotlight, I can: * hotkey it open * punch in the minimum to identify the application (over 2x more, almost all the time) * wait for it to update * it shows the wrong app…

Strange, I've never found Spotlight to be that slow or frustrating. I just tried it again to be sure I wasn't kidding myself, and find that I type about 3 keys, and then there's the app I want by the time I'm finished pressing the 3rd key.

It's speedy for the first few months, but once I build up a few dozen gigabytes of documents it starts to slow to an absolute crawl. Useful when searching for documents, absolutely, and faster than alternatives. But worthless for applications, which I open far more often than the average document (from a launcher, that is).

But that might be because my .Spotlight folder is > 1 gigabyte. And that's smaller than it has been in the past - my previous hard drive had it larger than 2 gb if I remember correctly, because I had tweaked it to index my source code. On my wife's computer it's only about 400 meg, and it finds applications in about a second (still much slower than Alfred or Quicksilver).

Re: My Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Mac OS X (2011 Edition)

#84
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but what if I want one file deeply nested inside a massive archive, like a source tree or something? In the scenario you describe, I generally use the dtrx script. http://brettcsmith.org/2007/dtrx/

As I said: 99%. I like default tools to be optimized for the common case, corner cases are just corner cases – how often are you extracting a single file from a massive source tree?

While I agree that for the average user the default behavior is appropriate, there is still room for improvement. I use Entropy ( http://www.EntropyApp.com ) , which is similar to Springy but also includes "in-archive quick look" and mode shortcuts. So, my workflow is now similar to this:

1. By default, automatically extract like the built-in archiver

2. For "transient archives" where I just want to preview the contents (pictures/documents/crash-logs), open with the CMD key pressed to view the contents. Then press space to preview the files.

I find myself in situation #2 often enough to warrant something like this. It's a lot more convenient than "Extract all -> navigate -> preview -> move to trash".

Re: My Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Mac OS X (2011 Edition)

#85
post #23

If we're making our own lists, here's some that others haven't mentioned: * Jumpcut - http://jumpcut.sourceforge.net/ - simple and unintrusive clipboard history * dterm - http://decimus.net/DTerm - popup terminal * bwana - http://www.bruji.com/bwana/ - man pages in your browser * Grand Perspective - http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ - disk usage program

I watched the dterm video, and it looks interesting, but the lack of an apparent scrollback (as soon as I type a different command, the previous output is gone) would bug me. (Plus, does it support history, including search, etc?) I'm using TotalTerminal - it's not context aware, but it's easier for me to launch it with Ctrl-` than to open a new virgin terminal whenever I need to do something really quick.

The only real win for dterm is the context-aware factor, but I find it to be a big-enough win that I keep it around. If you just need a quick virgin window and are using iterm2 (as you should be) then you can go into Prefs > Keys and set the global hot key toggle and then select the 'hotkey toggles a dedicated window with profile' to get a dterm-like overlay window that is a real terminal session.

Re: My Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Mac OS X (2011 Edition)

#86

A decent starter list, but definitely not complete (for me at least). I'd add the following * TotalFinder (makes the OS X finder not terrible anymore, tabs, etc) * HandsOff/LittleSnitch (oh, you're just using the built-in firewall? that's cute.) * Transmit (everything you could ever want in an FTP app) * CommandQ (W and Q are way too close together) * Mou (free alternative to Byword) * Evernote (note-taking that sync…

Is there a downside to using the default firewall, if I don't want to do things like bandwidth-capping apps?

I'm thinking that by 'built-in firewall' he/she means the built-in firewall GUI interface. I'd be interested to know what LittleSnitch is doing if it isn't hooking into ipfw.

Re: My Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Mac OS X (2011 Edition)

#87
post #23

If we're making our own lists, here's some that others haven't mentioned: * Jumpcut - http://jumpcut.sourceforge.net/ - simple and unintrusive clipboard history * dterm - http://decimus.net/DTerm - popup terminal * bwana - http://www.bruji.com/bwana/ - man pages in your browser * Grand Perspective - http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/ - disk usage program

DTerm is fantastic. It's not something I use often but the times when I do need/want it are what makes it fantastic. A simple example is that I wanted to make a txt file on my desktop so I hit the shortcut, typed touch x.txt and bam, there it was.

Re: My Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Mac OS X (2011 Edition)

#88
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to Pewpewarrows' comment, I'll give you a couple of examples of things I do with QuickSilver. I can never remember the IP address of my work's VPN, so I created a text file on my desktop with the IP as its name. Whenever I need it, I do: Ctrl+Space, ~/Desktop/[IP] to select the file, '.' to treat the filename as text, tab to go to the action part of QuickSilver, start typing "clipboard" and when "Copy to clipb…

> I can never remember the IP address of my work's VPN, so I created a text file on my desktop with the IP as its name. Whenever I need it, I do: Ctrl+Space, ~/Desktop/[IP] to select the file, '.' to treat the filename as text, tab to go to the action part of QuickSilver, start typing "clipboard" and when "Copy to clipboard" shows up, I press enter. It can sound like a lot of steps but it gives me the IP address in m…

Quicksilver is one of those things like learning Vim or Emacs (though less complex), where the not-so-gentle learning curve gives way to a ton of functionality at your fingertips.

Re: My Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Mac OS X (2011 Edition)

#89
post #79
post #30

I was really hoping to see a fix for OS X's mouse acceleration. It's annoying when using the OS, and completely broken when I fire up StarCraft or something else that requires fast and precise mouse movements. (I'm using a Microsoft mouse on a Mac Mini)

This works very well to remove OS X's mouse acceleration: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=194...

I haven't been able to user the Razer drivers for my DeathAdder because of bizarre behaviour and you may have just shown me the solution, thank you!

Re: My Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Mac OS X (2011 Edition)

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is odd, for me there is no lag on Lion when I hold down the backspace key. And what do you mean by stream redirection? That usually means this: > echo "derp" > foo.txt That has nothing to do with iterm2 and everything to do with bash or whatever shell you are using, I think. Might you be confusing iterm2 with iterm? Iterm2 is a completely separate piece of software than iterm, it's not the second version of the…

I mean things like 2>&1 or 2>/dev/null (redirecting error stream to stdout etc). This did not work for me last time I tried it. This coupled with significant lag when scrolling/listing huge dir, typing made me quickly abandon it. Terminal app does everything I really need and it's fast and reliable.

These things have nothing to do with the terminal emulator you're using and everything to do with your shell.
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