My Development Environment

Jack Applin

My hosts

CSU computers
Home Linux desktop
Home Windows desktop
CSU Macbook (MacOS, Linux)
White netbook for Sociology class
Spare green netbook
HP laptop
Laptop for home entertainment center (Linux, Windows)
Wife’s Windows laptop

Any given computer is disposable

One of the best parts of teaching CT320: Wayne Tryzna talked about the practical aspects of sys admin for the CS Department.

He stressed that all computers are disposable. If a computer in CSB 120 breaks, they replace it with a spare. There is no real data on those computers. All the real data lives on a server, which is backed up to high heaven.

I try to use the same philosophy. My real data is in the cloud.

Uniformity—all hosts look the same

As much as is practical, hosts look the same.

I don’t really try to make Windows or my Android phone look like Linux. However, I do try to make my Mac environment as similar to Linux as I can manage.

Directories are cheap–use them

    ~/Documents/
        Aerobics/
        Backup/
        CSU/
            MSTies/
                MST3K-Club.txt
                MSTies-room-application-Fall-2014.pdf 
                MSTies-room-application-Spring-2014.pdf 
            Sociology/
                SOC105/
                SOC253/
                    Gideon’s Trumpet.odt
                    jail tour.txt 
                    syllabus.pdf 
                    Moral Panic/
                        Moral Panics.pdf
                        Writing Assignment 1.pdf 
                        Writing Assignment Rubric.pdf

Sharpen the Axe

Take time to improve.
If you’re afraid of programming, then practice the phrase “Do you want fries with that?”
Learn your !@#$% tools:
- Vim
- Bash
- ssh/scp

Cloud

Dropbox
Linux Symlinks (relative)
Windows: properties of My Documents/My Pictures/My Music
Run dropbox syncer from crontab for some systems

Linux Symlinks

    Cloud	    -> Dropbox/Jack
    bin		    -> Cloud/bin
    .bash_logout    -> Cloud/Config/bash_logout
    .bash_profile   -> Cloud/Config/bash_profile
    .bashrc	    -> Cloud/Config/bashrc
    .cshrc	    -> Cloud/Config/cshrc
    .login	    -> Cloud/Config/login
    Documents	    -> Cloud/Documents
    Music	    -> Cloud/Music
    Pictures	    -> Cloud/Pictures
    src		    -> Cloud/src
    .vim	    -> Cloud/Vim
    Podcasts	    -> Music/Podcasts
    .ssh/config	    -> ../Cloud/Config/ssh/config

IDEs

They make you weak:

“I don’t know how to use method blah–Eclipse tells me how to do it! It’s not fair to expect me to know it on the test!”
We teach programming here, not Eclipse.
Who knows any phone numbers any more? Nobody! If you lose your phone, you’re doomed!
Sort of do it via Vim

Shell

~/.bashrc
~/bin
- be bold—throw it away if I don’t use it
- demo-{script,c99,c++}
- special characters
- bash
- Perl
- Python
- C
They’re in the cloud.

Vim

~/bin/vim
~/.vim/vimrc
~/.vim/gvimrc
They’re in the cloud.

Window manager

xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml
~/bin/bye

ssh

~/.ssh/config (in the cloud, of course):

    Host applin Applin csu CSU
        User applin
        HostName Greybull.CS.ColoState.Edu

    Host cs155 CS155 155
        User cs155
        HostName Greybull.CS.ColoState.Edu

It lets me do this as a shell command: ssh csu
or this: scp foo.c CS155:

Browser

Chrome bookmarks
Chrome search engines

Typical Development Cycle

vim
Use the [ key, mapped to ~/bin/run %<cr>
Use :!backup %