Programming on the Mac

I have now had my Macbook Pro for a month and thus believe I can write a more informed review of it. You can check out the last edition ( The 1st Knot) for my initial review if you missed it.

I'll start with the obvious question "What else have I done with the Macbook since my initial review?" The short answer is - programmed; and the short review is - "Awesome". So you can stop here and skip to Navigating the Mac unless you are actually interested in hearing about programming.

The primary reason, programming with the Macbook was awesome, was because of all the useful tools that came already baked into the OS. You see I am primarily a Web developer, which means that the basic tool I need besides a text editor or IDE like all other programmers, is a development server which supports at least 1 server-side language I know.

Here's the kicker: The Mac OS X v10.6 aka "Snow Leopard", comes with all that already pre-installed and ready to go. That is to say, it comes with its own Apache server, complete with PHP (which is enabled by un-commenting a line in httpd.conf.)

Once you have enabled PHP you're all set to do some hardcore PHP web development. All you have to do is place your files in your Sites folder. But... that's not all! Snow Leopard also comes with Python pre-installed. So head on over to djangoproject.com, download the latest release, install it, and you're all set to do some Django development as well. Of course remember to install and setup your MySQL or preferred database before you do so.