Ask HN: Setting up Mac for dev work

2 points by vigilantpuma 3y ago ↗ HN

Having just been laid off from a megacorp, I find myself back outside a technological walled garden for the first time in over seven years. In the past I've done Android development, server side development, data analysis, as well as frontend dev (but I hate it). I'm armed with a Macbook Pro but I have no idea what the latest sine qua non software is for development.

Any recommendations for a software engineer looking to start coding in the real world again?

5 comments

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Jeremy1026 3y ago ↗

Homebrew (https://brew.sh) will get you pretty far getting generic things on your machine. Your final set up will be reliant on what kind of development you plan on doing.

nicbou 3y ago ↗

Homebrew, as already suggested. iTerm2 is better than Terminal in subtle ways. I personally like Sublime Text and Sublime Merge for all purpose editing and committing.

I bought a MacBook recently - the first in 5 years - and I realised that I didn't have to do much else to make the system mine.

DamonHD 3y ago ↗

Signing up for the Apple dev stuff seems to get a decent basic set of *nix support in place, and is free.

tkiolp4 3y ago ↗

Don’t install many things on your Mac. Use virtual machines or containers as much as you can. You never know if ‘npm install’ (and similars) is going to take over your computer.

sigjuice 3y ago ↗

How does 'npm install' take over a computer? Does it need to run as root? I have never used npm before, so I am not sure.