I just inherited an iMac, which is going to be my new primary workstation. For the many Mac-using Clojurians out there, what are the essential superuser tools/tricks to know as a developer on a Mac? Also, is anyone using Lacona? https://www.lacona.io/

@d4hines I recommend using brew (https://brew.sh/) to install pretty much all software. It’s a unix-style package manager. Also iTem2 is a powerful replacement for the default terminal. Once you’ve installed brew, you can install iTerm2 with following command: brew cask install iterm2 I think then you’re good to go. 😉

or this: https://www.macports.org/ Not sure which is better overall, brew and macports allegedly each have their advantages.

For mac tools, https://eternalstorms.at/yoink/mac/ — Drag and drop helper, super useful https://www.panic.com/transmit/ — For interacting with S3 buckets along with B2, FTP and so on https://www.figma.com — My preferred tool for mockups https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/ — Excellent vector graphics tool http://sipapp.io/ — Keeps colour palettes handy https://www.gitkraken.com/ — Since I was born sometime after the command line https://www.alfredapp.com/ — Extremely competent search/command field https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amphetamine/id937984704 — One-click, on/off button for preventing sleep mode https://www.sparklabs.com/viscosity/ — Nice alternative to Tunnelblick https://daisydiskapp.com/ — Brilliant for finding out what’s hogging all that space http://airmailapp.com/ — My preferred email manager https://flexibits.com/fantastical — My preferred calendar app http://www.hammerspoon.org/ — For controlling window layout from the keyboard

This is my window control config for Hammerspoon

Of that list, for the 25 years I've done development work on a Mac, Transmit is the only thing I'd think of recommending (but then I don't do any design/UI stuff).

I had Alfred at one point but just never found it useful.

YMMV

Indeed. Back in the day, I bought MachTen for System 6, so I had Unix command line stuff on a Mac 🙂

I use quicksilver, which as far as I can tell does the same things alfred does. Couldn't live without it! It's a great help in shifting away from the mouse.

alfred kinda got replaced by the search bar redesign a couple years ago (aka apple ripped off alfred)

i tend to stick to apple apps because it's easier being trapped by one company than 10, but i stick to sublime text 3 for coding (except when I need to use xcode), OneNote for notes, and I like Numi as a text-based calculator

I think I'm suffering from inertia. I ditched apples hideous spotlight years ago and adopted quicksilver. Just had a quick look again and it does look like apple have made it into something useful. Not going to make the change though, next change will be to ditch osx and install some flavour of linux....

most important one for me: https://justgetflux.com/

I find TotalSpaces2 indispensable as well: https://totalspaces.binaryage.com/

gives you more options for multiple desktops and most importantly let’s you get rid of the extremely annoying transition animation when switching desktops

I love flux, but it’s incompatible with visual design alas.

Thanks for the helpful suggestions, guys!

i dont mind that transition animation, it's just the lag time between the previous window with focus and the next window with focus switching. It has to be close to a second. So I often swap desktops and the first character I type is in the previous window.

if they did the focus swap first and then the animation i think it would be fine

Lacona seems like a really interesting alternative to Spotlight/Alfred/Quicksilver, btw. It's extended with pure NodeJs and React components, so I wouldn't have to learn all the a whole new ecosystem (x-code, cocoa, etc.) just to make some plugins.

nothing wrong with learning new things either though 😉

True, true, but a few things top my learning list besides x-code at the moment.

.... Like diving deeper into Emacs. I swear it's like a drug... Has anyone started an Emacs-focused rehab clinic? Especially in Silicon Valley, that could be a real thing...

When you code Clojure by night and Java by day.. When I code in java I feel like a snail.. compared to clojure that is.

yeah clojure's productivity is hard to beat.

Back when I started with my current customer one of their representatives was a bit sceptical about the speed we were promising stuff to be delivered. Month later she was introducing me to other person in the organization as a "super-coder". I had to correct her and say that no, I'm just using Clojure.

I was alone beating the speed and quality of most of the other development teams with sizes between 4-8 developers they had

and I definitely do not consider myself as a super-coder, just using the right tools for the job

@niklas.collin Hope you don’t mind but I lightly edited that to fit in a tweet and sent it out. https://twitter.com/jakemcc/status/1029113246798827521

@niklas.collin Mind sharing the corner of the clojure ecosystem you were in and what aspects of clojure helped you out? Curious mostly to find new tools and libraries I should look into.