“Just as in financial investing, you must invest in your knowledge portfolio regularly.”
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 ― Andrew Hunt, The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master |
As developers we also need to be constantly investing in updated hardware and good software. As a family man I sometimes fall behind in my diligence in this area, kids teeth cleanings, healthcare premiums, and back to school clothes can take their toll on the budget. Also I am currently in a debate with myself on whether to go back to apple as my main development machine or not.
HP dv7-4295us (12/17/2010 had to repurchase due to intel cpu issue 4/27/2011)
My main @home workhorse, but its getting long in the tooth, it does not have an HD screen, HD camera, etc.....
8 GiB of memory
Windows 7 Professional 64 bit
Upgrades:
256 GiB SSD drive crucial CT256M4SSD2CCA
1 TiB 5400 Hard drive
(I like having 2 hard drives on my machine, maybe when 1 TiB SSDs get cheap I may change my mind)
Neat I just learned I can press FN + esc to get the serial # and other product details on my HP laptop
Other notable pieces of hardware I use with this machine are...
SanDisk Cruzer fitFinally Sandisk made a micro USB flash drive, you can get it up to 64GiB currently.
Yeti Microphone
A great microphone for making screencast, podcasts, or even just for Skype
I have been using this for about a year and I am really pleased with it.
Skullcandy Hesh 2 Headphones
Good sound at a reasonable price and you can easily replace the cord, which I have had to do.
I picked this up recently and it has allowed me to make us of a 23" apple monitor I had laying around. Now I can sit and bask in the glow of 3 screens on my desk
Here it is on Amazon if you are interested.
Software
I am sure I am going to leave something out but here goes.
Intellij 13.1
Pay for this one its worth it. Only $200 for an individual dev license.
A little pricy in my mind, but its a great IDE for .Net They even wisely incorporated git into this version.
Snagit
I use this screen capture program all the time. Its one of those tools that I was surprised how much I actually use it.
camtasia
This screencasting software has saved me hours of time communicating with clients. A simple short video demo they can review saves time vs verbal communication on progress.
I can get by without this, but it saves me so much time vs the alternatives. This and vSphere make me hesitant to jump to an OSX box as a permanent dev machine (though I do hear good things with the next version of Fusion)
Cygwin
Without cygwin, windows would be all but dead to me. I need a linux command line so I can function. Linux command line is the one skill I have which will still be viable 30 years from now.
Others
I had to buy this to support a client. It has grown on me since, but mainly today serves as little more than an extra ipad laying around the house.