A quick run down of everything I did to get my dev environment up and running on my new 2020 MacBook Pro...

First Things First...

Before I did anything with my new laptop, I first made sure to backup anything I wanted to save from my old laptop (a late 2014 MacBook Air). This included making a copy of the settings.json in VSCode, checking for and special settings in the .bashrc and .zshrc files, and backing up all of my documents.

Next Things Next...

The first thing I do with any new computer is go through the setup process and then check for software updates. Then I download any software that I know I'll need.

For this setup this included:

• VSCode
• Firefox
• Chrome
• Affinity Designer
• Postgres
• Discord
• Slack
• Zoom
• Streamlabs OBS
• Spotify
• iTerm2 (with OhMyZsh)

Then I went into iTerm2 and setup a new custom profile, as well as making customizations to my OhMyZsh settings.

After I had my terminal setup, I went into VSCode and replaced the contents of the settings.json with the saved copy from my old laptop.

Last Things Last.

The last thing I do to make sure I have everything I need is to go through and make sure I install all of the CLI programs I'll need for my development process. With this computer that meant updating XCode, updating Node and Ruby, and then installing Homebrew, NPM, React, Gatsby, and Rails.

I also made sure that when I was backing up my previous laptop, I made a list of all of the extensions I had in my previous install of VSCode. Re-installing those on my new machine is the last step of the process.

My Favorite VSCode Extensions:

• Dracula Official (theme)
• Panda (theme)
• Prettier
• ESLint
• Bracket Pair Colorizer
• Code Spell Checker
• Live Server
• JS JSX Snippets
• Material Icon Theme
• Ruby / VSCode Ruby
• WakaTime

Let me know how similar or different this is from your process of setting up a new machine! This is the basic "must have" list and doesn't include the fun stuff like choosing a new wallpaper or making sure I have my favorite screensaver installed.

xx Pixi / Emily