Setting up a Mac for programmers [closed]

Answer 1

QuickSilver is a very good option and yes, it is a bit different from Spotlight due to the large number of plugins you can have. If you have NetBeans, maybe you don't need Eclipse. I'd even say that with TextMate (my editor of choice too), you don't need NetBeans either :)

I second MacPorts, it is more up to date than fink and closer to the FreeBSD ports system (where I come from).

Answer 2

I've found OpenOffice to be very slow compared to the actual Microsoft Office for Mac. If you have some budget, I'd recommend that over OpenOffice.

I can second the recommendation for QuickSilver - it's one of the best launchers I've used.

For IM clients, if you have contacts outside of the AIM network then you may want to try Adium - a free multi-IM-network chat client that has handy things like searchable transcripts.

Another general utility that I highly recommend is iStat menus - it gives you a realtime monitor of CPU, memory, disk, etc. right in your menu bar.

Answer 3

First, install XCode. This gives you the Mac OS X development environment, but most importantly it also installs GCC so you can build both your own projects and applications that are distributed as source code. After that I'd suggest checking out TextMate, a popular text editor for Mac OS X (as seen in the Rails screencasts). If you're an Emacs/Vim user, there's Aquamacs and MacVim.

Answer 4

Instead of vmware fusion, virtualbox.org is free and worth a look.

Answer 5

Install all the Mac dev stuff, XCode etc., so you get the compilers.

For sure, Macports. Look through their catalog and install all the usual packages you're used to from Linux or other systems -- including development-related stuff like flex/bison, emacs, doxygen, m4, perl, python, etc.

I prefer "iTerm" over the built-in terminal. Don't forget to "export COMMAND_MODE=unix2003" that makes a number of things work the way you're used to.

I haven't given URLs for any of the things I've mentioned. That's what Google is for.

Answer 6

Find some cash and invest in extra memory for your mac. I know it's probably not the tip you want to hear, but honestly, it'll save you frustration in the long run. Apple ships these babies with way less memory than they deserve, and charges an arm and a leg for an expansion. I had a Mac Pro (quad-core Xeon) crawl to a halt until I got some real memory in there.

Another tip is to get a decent keyboard and mouse. Don't trust Steve Jobs with that "single mouse key for everything" crap. It works for ichat, not for real programming. Get yourself a real keyboard and a real mouse with multiple buttons. Configure your middle scrollwheel button to open expose or whatever it is that shows you all windows. Configure your fourth button for magnification.

Also, from your description it sounds like you don't really know what it is that you want to develop. If you're doing mac-specific things, get used to XCode ASAP and lose the rest. If you want to be doing windows programming, not sure why you would use a mac. If you want Java, you have Eclipse, you're ready to go.