Note: I'm on a Mac

First off, if you have a fresh macbook, the first things to get are:

1. Homebrew
2. iTerm2
3. Zsh

The missing package manager for macOS and the essential tool for any developer.

Press ⌘ + space and type terminal and press <enter>. A new terminal session should be up. In terminal paste the following:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Note: Command Line Tools for Xcode is a dependency for this action, which can be obtained through App Store Updates.

A terminal emulator for macOS that does amazing things.

With homebrew installed, we can install iTerm via brew install (taps homebrew/cask):

brew install iterm2

Press ⌘ + space, type iterm, and press <enter>. You are now using iTerm!

Zsh (or Z shell) is a much more powerful shell than Bash, so let's get it! Specifically, Oh My Zsh - which is an open-source framework for managing ZSH configs.

brew install zsh zsh-completions
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Don't forget to update the .zshrc with the /usr/local/bin to your $PATH environmental variable:

echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc

Note: Doing the above tells the system to use programs installed by Homebrew, rather than the OS default, if exists.

IDEs

• Atom brew install atom
• VSCode brew install visual-studio-code - preferred
• Sublime brew install sublime-text

Git workflow visualizer

• SourceTree brew install sourcetree
• Sublime Merge brew install sublime-merge

Testing/Debugging

• Postman brew install postman
• Charles brew install charles

Web browsers

• Google Chrome brew install google-chrome
• Google Chrome Canary brew install google-chrome-canary
• Vivaldi brew install vivaldi
• Brave Browser brew install brave-browser

Window manager

• Spectacle brew install spectacle

Communication

• Slack brew install slack
• IrcCloud brew install irccloud

Agile

• Trello trello.com
• Harvest brew install harvest for time-tracking

Markdown editor

• Typora brew install typora

DB GUI

• Postico (for postgreSQL) brew install postico

Credential Management

• 1Password brew install 1password
• MacPass brew install macpass

Misc

• Flux brew install flux (this feature is built-in to newer MacOS)
• Duet brew install duet for dual screen set-up
• Charles Proxy brew install charles for viewing all HTTP(S) incoming and outgoing traffic

defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 0
defaults write NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat -int 0
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

While you can use Mac OS's Keychain Access app to generate a password or test the strength of a password, it's not nearly as cool as doing it in terminal- and at the time of this writing, there is no way to generate a memorable password with the native app.

Memorable passwords are easier to remember than traditional passwords as they are a random collection of commonly used english words. There are many way to create memorable passwords, below are two ways.

1. Install shuf

brew install coreutils

2. Use shuf like so:

shuf -n4 /usr/share/dict/words | xargs echo | pbcopy && pbpaste

The above will output the generated password and also copy it to clipboard. Just paste (⌘ + v) the password where necessary.

To adjust complexity of password, change the number following -n, for example -n4 outputs 4 words, where as -n5 would output 5 words so it has higher entropy, increasing guess difficulty. An argument of -n3 outputs 3 words, therefore decreases complexity and guess difficulty. At the time of this writing

To hide the password output in the CLI, remove && pbpaste from the above script.

1. Install xkcdpass

pip install xkcdpass

2. Running xkcdpass

$ xkcdpass
> pinball previous deprive militancy bereaved numeric

For more, see https://github.com/redacted/XKCD-password-generator#running-xkcdpass