Digital Sanctum

As a solo developer myself I’ve come to use these tools and techniques to help save me time and be more efficient. I prefer tools which are both cheap and simple so the tools I present here will have an emphasis on both. Besides, if you’re a solo developer you need all the time you can get which means not trying to figure how to use the tools that are suppose to make you more productive.

#1. Time Tracking

There are tons of online time tracking tools and sometimes it’s tough choosing one over the other. I tried several before settling on Harvest. It does everything I want, nothing more, nothing less. What’s even better is that there’s a free (as in beer) version which includes: tracking 2 projects, 4 clients,  and unlimited invoicing for 1 user. If want to have programmatic access to Harvest they even have an API. Have an iPhone? No problem, you can track your time anywhere with an iPhone which is also included in the free version.

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I have to say I’m impressed unimpressed with this new eclipse-based IDE, 3rdRail, from CodeGear.

Update: As I’ve actually started to use the editor I’ve encountered several exceptions that seem to be related to the code completion feature. The exceptions (followed by a nagging popup window) are so frequent that I’ve gone back to using Netbeans for my Ruby editing.

Update: (see comments below for a workaround to the exception I refer to above.

I’ve just finished watching the “Tour of the 3rdRail IDE” video and I invite you to do the same. Below I outline some of the features available but I was surprised to see one specific feature missing, a debugger? In fact 3rdRail joins the majority of Ruby editors that don’t sport a debugger. The only exception I’ve seen is the Netbeans Ruby editor. Anyway, you can check it out yourself by downloading a 30 day free trial from the CodeGear.com website.

Here are the features:

• Available on Macintosh, Red Hat Linux, Windows XP and Windows Vista
• Support for latest Ruby (1.8.5), Rails (1.2.3) and all databases
• Project Commander, a powerful in-IDE command shell (you have the choice of using this command shell or using several wizards that are also available
• Ruby and Ruby on Rails Code Completion
• Key Refactorings for rename Controller, Action and View
• Live Dependencies View for Ruby and Ruby on Rails projects with file linking and project navigation features
• Embedded Ruby console (IRB) with Code Completion
• Rails Project and File Creation Wizards
• DOM Inspector
• Regular Expression Builder
• Subversion integration
• XML HTTP Request Monitor

Here are some visual snapshots of some of the features:

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There seems to be a new push in the build server space to move to a distributed model. Here’s a quick run down of some server choices and why they should be a welcomed change to your development environment.

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