Having reviewed the responses to the What is your WordPress development environment? question I decided to list the tools that I don’t use in my development environment.
Update October 2022
I’ve had a few attempts at documenting my tool non-usage history. My latest effort, the table below, is a work in progress.
| Tool | Since | Why I don’t use it |
|---|---|---|
| Object REXX | 2014 | I now write my command line tools using DOS commands and PHP |
| Browsers: Opera | 2014 | I use Chrome most of the time and very occasionally Firefox. |
| Cygwin | 2016 | I now use commands such as tail from search me |
| Dropbox | 2020 | I don’t use any form of cloud backup except what my iPhone uses |
| Skype | 2020 | Zoom |
| A packaged WAMP installation | – | I’ve got a custom WAMP install |
| Text editors: Coda 2, VI(m), SublimeText | – | I use notepad++ |
| A Mac | – | But I do have an iPhone and an ancient iPad air |
| Photoshop | – | GIMP |
| Illustrator | – | – |
| Grunt | – | wp-scripts for building JavaScript |
| Vagrant | – | Never managed to install it. Last time I tried was at WordCamp Brighton. I’ve now got Docker since it’s needed for wp-env. |
| Docker | 2022 | No idea how to use it. |
| Linux on a laptop | 2009 | Not since I left IBM |
| Zend server | 2014 | I tried Zend PHP server very briefly when I was trying to get Xdebug to work. |
| Laravel, bower, angular.js | 2016 | No longer have a need for it. |
| BitBucket with Sourcesafe | 2015 | No longer have a need for it. |
stuff that still needs reworking…
I need a better solution for
- Minifying jQuery and CSS
- Creating localized versions of my plugins
- Regression testing
- Parsing code to produce dynamic documentation
- Creating templates for custom post types
I’ve never used
- Tools I’d never heard of until Feb 2014: compass, livereload, measureelt, bootstrap, sketch
Changes since August 2014 ( to Feb 2016 )
- I tried Zend PHP server very briefly when I was trying to get Xdebug to work
- My development machine now has a Laravel 5.2 development, which means I also have node.js, bower, angular.js, SaSS ( Syntactically Awesome StyleSheets ) and other stuff I thought I could avoid.
- I’ve had to reinstall Putty and Pageant in order to use SSH
- I now use BitBucket with SourceSafe
- I use WP-CLI very rarely; I have a similar solution with oik-batch. I have a long term plan to convert my oik-batch code to WP-CLI… if it makes sense to do so.
- I believe that certain parts of Symfony (finally corrected the spelling) are needed by Laravel
Changes since Feb 2016 ( to Aug 2016 )
- I do have Firefox installed
- I have a working PHPUnit solution
- I appear to have a working PHP debugging solution using Xdebug and PhpStorm 10.2
- I’m very much into doing things with Git; raising Issues for just about every change I make
- I can even do pull requests
- I use SSH and Git to manage the source of WP-a2z.org
- I’m slowly accepting WP-cli
- I’ve stopped using Laravel
Things that haven’t changed much
- I’ve stopped using Laravel
- I’m still very wary of Composer, npm
- I can’t Grunt
- I don’t know how to SASS
- I tried installing Vagrant but fell at too many hurdles
- One day soon I’ll be trying React JS
- And then I’ll revisit the REST API
- I intend to try using Codeception, Travis CI