A unixy workflow

As a developer, chances are that you are on a Unix. Also, you might like automating things that you don't care too much about but want them done anyway. Here are a few things that I do on a day-to-day basis and that help me a lot.

In short, here are the things that I use (almost) daily:

Cron

Cron helps me not ignore my battery indicator 1, fetch email, sometimes is my news reader and tells me when I'm working too long.

I think every computer should have an easily accesible scheduling system.

Git

Everything I do is in git. My projects, my dotfiles, my bachelor thesis, memories from old projects, most of the open-source libraries I use and even the notes I take in the browser.

Git allows me to look back in time, try out ideas, label them (with tags and branches) and to all of this fast, whenever I want. Additionally, it's availlable anywhere where I have internet access.

For example, here's what I do on a new machine (be it a server, new computer or an account at my university):

$ git clone git://github.com/heyLu/confidence
$ mv confidence/.git .
$ rm -rf confidence
$ git checkout .

And then I have my favourite shell config, some small tools, my vim config and a lot of convenient helpers availlable. I could even put it into a script if I want. (That's one example of how unix lets you compose things. And/or batch run them.)

Vim

Well, as it turns out, IDEs are sometimes convenient (for example, I don't know of good debugging support for Clojure in Vim), but for most tasks I prefer Vim. It's fast, has loads of plugins 2 availlable and doesn't make me repeat myself. At its core, it's a vocabulary for manipulating text. That it also does syntax highlighting, source browsing for various languages and has a horrible scripting language is mostly an accident. But the ability to manipulate text sensibly? That's what vim is for me.

Again, one example: typing cw and then a sequence of letters lets me change a word. And then I can repeat that change using .. Vim doesn't stop there, but gives you a whole new world of text-editing. And if that's what you do a lot, you might want to try that.

Grep (or ack or ag)

Code search. But also mail search. And config search. And whatnot. For quick and dirty it's enough on its own and for more complex tasks you can pipe things together.

Again. that's a feature that IDEs also have. But what they can't do is compose things, put them into scripts and share them with other people easily. These are the reasons that I believe that traditional IDEs won't replace unixy tools. If anything will, then it might be something that at least keeps the spirit. Things like LightTable might, because they let you change them, because they provide abstractions, not finished tools.

pandoc

Everything I write is in some git repository. Most likely written in Markdown. Or one of the other 10 formats that pandoc supports. So after having written a blog post, thesis or weird other thing, pandoc can convert it into HTML, PDFs or even ODTs.

This is one example of a tool that languages like Haskell make possible. It's not only a converter, but also a data structure for documents. In other languages you wouldn't be able to clearly see the underlying structure, you'd be busy trying to convert documents. (Well, you might discover it after a long time, or by thinking beforehand, but with languages like Haskell it's natural and common to do this. You almost always write code that is the solution to a bit more general problem that you are trying to solve.)

XMonad

My window manager. One I can trust. It always does what I want it to do. And it's also written in Haskell, with an interesting underlying data structure.

Multiple users

I try to keep personal stuff, university and work separate. With multiple users I can have different browser sessions, contexts, histories. Sometimes even in parallel, with multiple X displays at once.

This isn't perfect yet, but it helps me focus on what I want/have to do.

Also, a unix group for myself helps me access shared files such as my music library.

Mutt + offlineimap