I was listening to a recent episode of Syntax the other day in which they were discussing tools that used to be all the rage, but don't get a lot of love any more.

The conversation started on Gulp and Grunt, and I found myself getting pretty nostalgic. Walking home from the office in the dark under the street lights, I almost found myself getting downright emotional.

I didn't really know anybody in the industry when I got serious about web development, so I stayed up to date mostly with tutorial sites and blogs. I just sort of picked up good tools and practices as I stumbled across them. Eventually, I read an article about Grunt, the hip new way to automate your build process. For me, it was like going from 0-100 in a split second.

So anyway, hearing about Grunt made me think of the early days of my career and the first time I picked something up that felt like it multiplied my powers tenfold.

I was wondering if anyone here had any similar moments in their development path? When was the first time you found yourself going "NOW we're cookin' with gas!"?