It took a season of research, learning, listening, and practice, but I am now consistently designing and developing web content using these powerful groups of tools:

GIT for revision control (through X-code’s Command Line Tools, the SourceTree app’s management of repos, and BitBucket.org‘s cost-free online hosting of those repos).* [UPDATED Dec-07-2012] About 50% of the time I develop fully locally on my machine with an instant LAMP stack for Mac called MAMP. Totally slipped my mind before, but now ya know.

SASS for speedy and correct CSS authoring (through the CodeKit app’s error checking and css compilation).

[SOCIETAL NOTE: as a man in this world, I try to be conscious of my role in sexism and patriarchy in order to avoid constantly propagating the problem. In that vein, I've decided that the Sass logo is sexist and offensive. While the acronym Sass (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets) has nothing to do with gender identity, the designers of the Sass logo, by depicting a woman enjoying herself on a corded phone, seem to have chosen to rely on the convenient connection between the term "sassy" and its relationship to describing women's behavior - a connection which is sexist. Boooo.]

Coda for aesthetically pleasing code authoring.

Instead of launching each of these pieces of software  one-by-one, I shave off a few seconds every time by using the Alfred app to jump them all off when I enter the keyword “codefest.”