Several times, I’ve mentioned that I’m a huge fan of markdown – I use it to write emails, I dig that that’s how GitHub handles README files, I use minor variations of it in my blogging, and I’ve got a favorite app for it.

Thanks to a heads up from one of my partners, I can now write documentation with markdown.

Here’s the thing: I’ve mentioned that I’m a huge advocate for code comments - I think it’s better to go a little overboard for the sake of clarity than not, especially in open source projects.

And sure, PHP DocBlocks and tools like PHPDocumentor make it relatively easy to generate documentation, but documentation like that is best suited for other developers. It’s not exactly end-user friendly, right?

In that case, you’re talking about writing a manual.

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Ever since November, I’ve tried to keep up a running list of the various tools and applications that I have in my development toolbox.

As of now, the list is a little out of date, which I’ll aim to update soon enough, but I recently needed a free Mac file archiver for certain purposes and stumbled across Keka (thanks to Michael for the heads up).

Generally speaking, the default Mac file archiver isn’t bad, but I use Amazon Cloud Drive as my backup solution of choice, and they only allow up to 2GBs per upload. Kinda weak, sure, but for the amount of storage that you get, it’s hard to beat the price.

So in order to handle this, I needed a way to split some of my larger files into 2GB chunks.

Enter Keka.

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As much as I love GitHub, it’s lack of mobile applications has always been kind of a bummer to me. Sure, there is GitHub Issues and it’s not bad, but it’s basically a way to keep up with issues and bugs that crop with your repositories. Personally (and surely I’m not alone), I’ve always wanted a full-featured version of GitHub for iPhone.

A couple of years a go, I met a Matthew Strickland via Twitter – he’s a solid guy, solid developer, and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting up more than a couple of times around Atlanta.

Matthew, Jared, and Myself at a recent meetup.

Recently, he released Gitty – and it solves the problem of a missing client of GitHub for iPhone. Continue Reading…

One of the biggest hurdles that I’ve experienced when working with pull requests in some of the projects I have on GitHub is the use of tabs and spaces and how they impact how code appears on the landing page.

Naturally, code should be well-formatted and easy to read not only for those who are simply investigating the project but also who are contributing to it.

Though I’ve shared a few plugins specifically for Coda on how to automate this, but we all use different editors, have different formatting techniques, and so on. The thing is, there’s not much we can do about how others configure their editor.

But here’s the thing: I think that if you’re the one in charge of a project, you have the responsibility of making sure that all merged code is easy to read and easy to manage.

Just as we have linters for various languages, we also have code formatters for different languages. Last week, I discovered PHP Formatter which is a really solid web application that serves as a solid, ahem, PHP code formatter.

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One of the things that I enjoy doing is helping others promote their site and their products just as much as I dig sharing it and discussing it with you guys.

As such, I try to make sure that I promote that sponsors who sponsor this site over the last month.

Of course, when it comes to writing posts like this, it’s easy to sound more like a salesman than someone who is aiming simply trying to thank those who opt to advertise on the site.

I dislike that, so I try not to come off that way.

So, for what it’s worth, I approve and vet who I let help sponsor this site because I went them to be as just as much value to you guys as they are to helping keeping this blog going.

With that said, be sure to check ‘em out, maybe they’ll provide you guys with some good stuff to help you in your day-to-day.

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