Anaya Rojo
ES
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Tools I wish I had known when I started programming

October 15, 2019

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Tools I wish I had known when I started programming

Just as a carpenter chooses the right tool for each job, a programmer has a wide range of applications, techniques and technologies available to help get the work done.

Below I list the tools that would have saved me headaches and helped me move much faster when I started programming.

Visual Studio Code and its extensions

The Word of web developers.

Visual Studio Code is a modern, free source code editor developed by Microsoft.

Among its main features are:

  • Autocomplete
  • Git integration
  • Debugging
  • Extension support

Below is a list of the extensions I use the most:

  • Bootstrap 4, Font Awesome 4
  • Bookmarks
  • Bracket Pair Colorizer 2
  • Color Highlight
  • Liveserver
  • New Moon Syntax Theme
  • Project Manager
  • Terminal
  • TODO Highlight
  • TODO Tree
  • vscode-faker
  • vscode-icons

Link: https://code.visualstudio.com

Google Chrome and its extensions

The black hole on your PC that sucks up most of the RAM.

Google Chrome is one of the most widely used browsers; it was developed by Google based on Chromium.

Among its main features are:

  • Native support for scripts
  • Native support for multimedia content
  • Support for adding extensions

Here is a list of the extensions that have helped me the most:

  • ColorZilla
  • CSS Peeper
  • JSON Formatter
  • Lorem Ipsum
  • Pesticide for Chrome
  • Wappalyzer
  • WhatFont

Link: https://www.google.com/chrome/

Git and GitHub

The way a programmer travels through time

Git is a version control system designed by Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux.

Git can record the changes made to code. It also records who made the changes and can restore deleted or modified code.

Among Git’s main features are:

  • Distributed version control
  • Branching system
  • High performance

Basic commands:

Initialize a new git repository.

git init

Add a file.

git add “nombre_de_archivo”

Add all the files in the directory.

git add .

Commit the changes made. The “message” is generally used to attach a brief description of the changes to the commit.

git commit –am “message”

Revert the commit identified by “hash_commit”.

git revert “hash_commit"

Push the “branch_name” branch to the remote server.

git push origin “branch name”

Show the current status of the branch.

git status

Link: https://git-scm.com/

GitHub is a platform designed for developers, as well as a project management system that uses git for version control.

Among its features are:

  • Code review
  • Project management
  • Integrations
  • Team management
  • Collaborative development
  • Documentation
  • Hosting

Link: https://github.com/

Postman

The client that can request GET, POST, PUT, PATCH and DELETE

Postman is a collaboration platform for API development. Postman’s features simplify each step of building an API and streamline collaboration so you can create better APIs.

Among its main features are:

  • API client
  • Test automation
  • Design and mocking
  • Documentation
  • Monitors
  • Workspaces

Link: https://www.getpostman.com/

Cypress

A robot programmed with Javascript capable of checking your entire website

Cypress.io is an open-source front-end testing tool built for the modern web.

Among its main features are:

Fast, easy and reliable testing for anything that runs in a browser

  • Debugging
  • Real-time reload
  • Automatic waiting
  • Network traffic control
  • Consistent results
  • Screenshots and videos

Link: https://www.cypress.io/

Now it’s your turn — share in the comments which tools have helped you the most.