Mac Development Environment

Last week I finally bought a new personal computer. My 2008’s Vostro computer was too old and its battery lasts for around 15 minutes unplugged. Since my complete move to Ubuntu on 2011 I was thinking about making the switch to a Mac computer when I got a chance.

Buying Apple devices in Brazil are just for rich people. Or dummies. The $1,299 new MacBook costs $ 2,200 as today’s exchange rate. In Chile it’s much more reasonable costing $1,535 as today’s rate.

So I got one :)

As a newcomer I was totally lost with the Multi-Touch and gestures thing. Also the Control, Option, Command differences. The main purpose of investing on a such expensive computer was to start learning iOS Development with Swift which is a beautiful and modern language that will be open sourced later this year. I think Apple have built one of the most thrilling Developers Communities in the world and I expect Swift to become a really great language to work with - not only because iOS, watchOS and tvOS Development but also because its potential to change Web and Enterprise Software Development.

So as a developer the first thing I did when turned on my new computer was to install developer tools.

Console

Everything starts with a good console. Mac come with a lot of languages and tools installed by default and the standard bash shell is good enough. But you’re just one command line away to get Homebrew, then Cask, then oh-my-zsh. With this combination I have the best console experience ever. Everything is explicit, informational and you can accomplish so much without any custom settings or additional plugins. It just works.

Text Editor

GitHub’s Atom was already my favorite text editor on Linux and Windows. And packages like go-plus, react, turbo-javascript, omnisharp, atom-beautify, file-icons, merge-conflicts, pigments, linter (select your language(s) here), minimap, emmet, autoclose-html, autocomplete-paths and script provides everything I need to work and to have some extra fun.

Xcode

Some parts of Xcode will be required by Homebrew but as I wanted to start playing with iOS Developmemt I need to install the complete version. Everything available from the App Store. Swift Playground is remarkable and fun. The IDE is so clear and focused that sometimes I think something is missing. A complete new different way to write code that is fun and easy.

Additional software

It’s also good to mention that additional software are also vastly available. It comes with Pages, Keynote and Numbers but you can also install LibreOffice which is really well crafted for OS X. Chrome, Skype and Spotify (for my long programming sessions) are available as expected.

Bonus: iOS Learning Resources

There are a lot of iOS Development courses available on Udacity and Lynda. Additionally, some high-quality and free courses are available on iTunes U.

Also well written official reference books for Swift and Cocoa are available on iBooks Store for free. I got the reference books and also enrolled to PUCRS’ iOS Development in Swift - a carefully series of video lessons that are on my native language (with English subtitles available) that worth watching.