Programming:
I work in a couple languages and develop everything from full-blown applications to web applications to scripts for server maintenance. These are my top picks for whatever language I am working in at the moment.
Java:
I have been using (for several years) and am partial to NetBeans [Linux – BSD – Windows – OSX]. This Java IDE has progressed into a full-featured environment including the following integrated pieces:
- Tomcat server
- local Pointbase database
- Javadoc Index search
- Internationalization
- refactoring engine
- JUnit testing
I haven’t really tested Eclipse [Linux – BSD – OSX – Windows] more than to install it and run it for a short while. Truthfully, I just didn’t feel like overcoming the learning curve, since I already know how to do what I want to do in NetBeans.
Bash Scripting:
Of course it is always best to do Bash scripting in a bash shell, preferably in XEmacs [Linux – BSD – OSX – Windows] or Nano [Linux – BSD – OSX – Windows (DOS)].When I can, that is exactly what I do. Often, however, I am forced at work to develop Bash scripts for servers from my desktop (Windows) PC. For this I have found evolvEd [Windows] to be the tool of choice. It provides syntax highlighting and code completion hints which help a great deal when you are unable to paste a line of code into a terminal window and see how it runs. Of course, I can test those scripts (at least partially) in Cygwin [Windows] which I make sure to install on every Windows box I am expected to work with, but those tests are limited in that calls to other programs don’t work if those programs aren’t installed in Cygwin.
Python:
Python is fairly new to me still, for anything beyond server scripts, and large text file parsing, which is what got me started in Python. (Python can do a line-by-line parse of a 280MB text file, determining the interesting non-empty lines by the characters in the 12th – 20th position and writing them out to a series of 1200 line files in a matter of a couple minutes – as opposed to the constant hung process I was getting with a Bash script to do the same thing.) Being new to Python I have really only worked with IDLE [Linux – BSD – Windows – OSX] which is included with the current distribution of Python. There may be better things out there – perhaps jEdit [Linux – BSD – Windows – OSX] or something else, but I am still too new in the game to make that decision, even for myself.
