The tools I work with – The hardware
There are quite a few tools I use to complete my tasks. Either hardware or software, these can be critical to getting good results and make the development process smooth. Here's a look through my current hardware setup!
The desktop
My desktop computer, Dominion, is the latest addition to the line-up. Newly built at the beginning of summer, I assembled this to offer high performance so it'd be able to take on any task I throw at it. One of my critical choices went to the RAM, which I now have 32 GB of. When I develop and test new features for the Minecraft servers, I'll sometimes have my full lineup of development software loaded, plus a Bungee instance, plus two or three servers, plus two clients all running at the same time. That's a lot of memory used up, as Minecraft can get very hungry! This computer can thankfully take it like a champ. This is also what I use to create image renders of the various player builds.
The laptop
My trusty ThinkPad laptop, nicknamed Wagon, has been with me for several years now. While not a speed demon, it's a sturdy piece of hardware with a long lasting battery life and a decent performance. For the longest time, this was my main development machine, and I can take it with me to work from almost anywhere.
As some of you might have heard, my previous desktop died early last year. I ended up using the laptop as my main computer, connecting it to external monitors, keyboard and mouse for a more comfortable setup, and it proved to work so well that I delayed replacing the desktop by over a year.
The tablet
The tablet I call Signal, while not my latest addition, is one that I've only recently started experimenting with as a work tool. This Microsoft Surface Go tablet has limited capacity but it surprised me with decent performance results after running some tests, so I installed my development environment to see how that'd perform. While I won't run any Minecraft servers on this, it's working great for lighter tasks, such as working on a website or web tool. Use its touchscreen, add in a Bluetooth keyboard, maybe a wireless mouse, and it's a capable enough setup! As a bonus, it's extremely small and light to carry. This allows me to indulge sudden ideas, as pictured here where I made improvements to the forums while riding a train.
That's it for the hardware aspect! In a later update, I'll cover the software mainstays that allow me to make the above work.
– Doctacosa