How I Work
A few days ago, the creator of Laravel Taylor Otwell published a story here on Medium about how he works. If you haven’t read it, you can read it here.
The story inspired me to do the same. I have a shifting day, with a lot of interesting aspects.
The Average Day
Since I study and have lectures on varying times, there is no such thing as an “average day”. Most weekdays start out at the IT-University of Copenhagen at 10:00 am. I live roughly 60 minutes of walking and commuting from the university, so I happily accept the days with lectures and meetings later than nine. Normally the day at the university either consists of a lecture and exercises or regular group work.
Currently I work on an OSM Visualizer, which in “average-day-terms” is called a map. We develop this in Java. Normally Java is a synonym for a heavy IDE like Eclipse or IntelliJ, but I really can’t get my head around using such an IDE. I code the Java application in Atom and builds it either directly with javac or with Ant. It’s not that I don’t like heavy IDE’s, but I prefer the more lightweight alternative, where I install the extensions I need.
On some days, I leave ITU a bit after noon and head towards Pandi Web, where I work as a developer. I am permanently assigned to Pairy, where I mostly develop integrations between Pairy and either webshops or accounting systems. I am developing in the PHP language, which without doubt is my preferred language. I also use Atom at Pandi Web.
I get home between 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm depending on work load and whether I left for Pandi Web or stayed at ITU.
Some of the evenings are used to exercise my hobby of many years. Yes, you guessed correctly: Developing even more software! I am a closeted entrepreneur and I use a few hours a week on creating and maintaining my projects.
These projects are normally written in Laravel and PHP7.
My machines
I am almost always followed by a 2011 MacBook Pro 13". An old machine, but stil going strong. I’ve upgraded the parts over time, to keep it going. The MacBook works as an in the field development machine, used at ITU, Pandi Web, while commuting and everywhere but home basically. Obviously the harddrive is encrypted with AES256.
At home I work on a 2011 iMac 21.5", also going strong. The iMac is sitting beside another 21.5" screen. I use a Razer Chroma 7.1 to isolate myself from my girlfriend and my neighbours to work more effective.
Development Tools
As I said earlier, I’m using Atom as my primary editor. I use iTerm2 instead of the default Terminal in OSX. I use Sequel Pro to interact with my databases, and it is definitely a wonderful tool compared to MySQL Workbench.
I’ve adopted Homebrew over App Store for installing tools on my Mac.
Productivity
I am extremely bad at organising my tasks. Whenever I open one of my own projects, I can almost feel what to do. When I try to use a tool to organise myself, I fail all the time. I’m more of a “dig-right-in” developer, which sometimes makes me more effective, while also making my confused at times.
If you have any questions about my work and habbits, feel free to ask. I don’t bite!
