I use the Linux operating system at home, only occasionally using Windows for gaming or, rarely these days, things that just don't work on Linux.

Developing in C or C++ is quite nice on Linux. Mostly the tooling just works. The one exception is Debugging.

Gdb is OK but really I struggle with it, typing gets annoying real quick. It is incredibly powerful but just in my hands. I want something that just work. VS Code has a competent debugger but then so does Clion.

After installing month long trial of Clion and I was debugging my problem in minutes. Eventually I ended up creating a CMake file to help out Clion and using it to edit files.

It's a nice IDE a few quirky differences but an IDE I can use. I still maintain the shell build system and am using lazyGit. Clion has just replaced Zed as an editor and comes with a debugger that is competent from a user experience point of view.

Currently I am just coding up some simple SDL3 experiments in C, nothing earth breaking. Clion trial license allows you to use their equivalent to CodePilot. I haven't used CodePilot but the Clion help is actually quite useful. Sometimes guessing wrong but often getting it close enough. I am writing stuff that has been written many times before by many people so perhaps not the best comparison.

In a week or two I will have to decide whether or to puchase Clion, if I do I am thinking I will add on the AI code helper. I estimate gives me a 10-20% productivity increase when writing code. Nice but I suspect that will drop a bit as I write more complicated code.

What is does get write though make coding a lot more pleasant. Taking some of the boiler plate out of coding. This encourages me to code more which makes it worthwhile.

Clion does seem to remove a lot of friction to coding and now has a Zig plugin which seems well supported even if I have not experimented with it. I keep pondering about moving to Zig.

The Christmas and New Year holiday is nearly over for me. Two of my children are university students so we have another week or two before the house goes quiet and I can start to focus again.

There are many small plans afoot but as is life many will not come to fruition. I feel like I am in a good place at the moment and looking forward to attempting some of the many tasks I am thinking about.

Kaizen is still my theme and I am steadily improving my environment both physical and virtual.