Useful Software for Ruby on Rails Development on Mac OS X

This is not a guide on how to set up a Ruby on Rails development environment, since I think there are better guides out there for that. Rather, this is a list of things I personally install before I begin any coding begins.

1. Homebrew – The “missing” package manager for OS X. This command line tool makes it ultra easy to download and install packages.
2. Git – Though Mac OS X comes with a pre-installed version of Git, it is likely out of date. Can be updated with Homebrew.
3. Postgresql – Database system. Can be installed with Homebrew.
4. rbenv – A ruby version manager. Can be installed with Homebrew.
5. Zsh – Since I no longer like to spend too much time customizing my .bashrc, Zsh comes with a much better set of defaults including git aliases and color scheme. Can be installed with Homebrew.
6. Sublime Text 3 – My preferred text editor. Simple and clean UI with powerful editing capabilities.
7. iTerm2 – Improved terminal with better split screen support and other features.
8. Dash – A documentation set manager so you can access API documentation offline for pretty much any language, framework or library. The global search is super useful.
9. Heroku Toolbelt – Heroku’s command line tool for deploying and managing apps.
10. Cyberduck – An FTP program. Also supports connection to S3 buckets.
11. Firefox – Great browser with a bunch of useful add-ons and a cool “Responsive Design Mode”
12. Chrome – Also a great browser with a bunch of useful add-ons.
13. MAMP – Useful for editing this site theme where I write about Ruby on Rails stuff
14. Xcode – Useful for building iOS clients that talk to Ruby on Rails servers
15. MindNode Pro – This is a very useful mind mapping tool that can be bought from the app store. Very useful for mapping out those big ideas.

Anyways, these are the tools that I use to do most of my programming these days. There are a lot of different setups out there, but this is mine and I’m pretty happy with it so far.