

The 8 Essential Tools for Programmers - thinkingserious
http://www.thinkingserious.com/2008/04/05/the-8-essential-tools-for-programmers/
What tools to you consider essential and fundamental for programmers?
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ubudesign
He left this one out: plain paper and pencil. lets you do plain text and it
out saves your file!

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thinkingserious
But how do I grep my stack of plain papers?

Seriously, yes I agree, plain old paper and pen is absolutely essential. They
say geniuses think on paper.

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sadiq
Big whiteboard also does wonders for holding mental state.

In the office we've got some great big windows running down one wall that we
use as scratchspace with special markers. Works a treat.

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jmzachary
Was this a class presentation written for a CS 101 undergraduate audience at a
community college?

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chaostheory
in the same vein as gdb is strace, another lifesaver if you're on almost any
nix box

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pmorici
"1. Plain Text"

I'm confused, is there another option?

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klocksib
Even more strange, he says plain text then says he uses markup languages in
them...

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graywh
No, not strange at all. Plain text is the storage format for that markup
language. The number of tools that can work with plain text may be
"uncountable", but for something like rich text there's not as many. The idea
is that even if the editor you originally used goes away, the format of the
file itself will always be readable. If someone needs to open an MS Powerpoint
presentation in 30 years, it may not be so easy.

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tx
He forgot to mention coffee and a computer. FAIL.

