21 In a Glimpse
Tags: christmashackathon, tools, developertools, motivation
Published: 2023-04-23 11:18:26

---
title: 21 In a Glimpse
published: true
date: 2020-12-31 18:39:35 UTC
tags: ChristmasHackathon,tools,DeveloperTools,motivation
canonical_url: https://chrisdevcode.hashnode.dev/21-in-a-glimpse
---

[https://linktr.ee/chrisdev](https://linktr.ee/chrisdev)

> Well, I started writing an article, a really long one so I had to break it down then post the whole piece (ironic tho) later once I am done.

# 21 in A Glimpse

My journey into a full-stack dream job seriously started in March 2020, and I've learned more from the many mistakes I have made along the way.

After research and a little bit of practice, I thought I'd document my preferences and choices that I'll probably use in '21. Most of my suggestions are from the Dev communities and some individuals who I admire how they work and probably walking in the same path.

This can also be a guide into development for newbies or just a brush-up.

I will focus mostly on website development and design because so far that's what I have been doing and somehow courageous about my skills on that.

## How I choose My Tools and Paths

Well, first of all, I look at what the big tech companies are using in terms of their technology based tools and also job requirement for their engineering staff. By that, I know that I am setting my bars too high because the biggies want the best right? I challenge myself to see how I fair and most of the time not so great.

I also look at local companies around me and what they use and need for their technologies and websites. I'd say most of them use tools that I don't enjoy so I mostly focus on international companies to set my standards.

Twitter dev community has personel that have opened my eyes to see what is happening and what is really used. [catalinmpit](https://twitter.com/catalinmpit), [florinpop75](https://twitter.com/florinpop1705), [traversymedia](https://twitter.com/traversymedia), [danny](https://twitter.com/DThompsonDev), [dennisivy11](https://twitter.com/dennisivy11), [themarcba](https://twitter.com/themarcba) , [ravin](https://twitter.com/ravinwashere), [denicmarko](https://twitter.com/denicmarko), [javascripteacher](https://twitter.com/javascriptual), [carol](https://twitter.com/CarlaNotarobot), [aleksandra](https://twitter.com/aleksandrasays), [nehemia](https://twitter.com/NehemiahKiv), [telmo](https://twitter.com/telmo) and many more content creators have really made me make my path and set clearly possible goals for my next phase of becoming an engineer.

Facebook Developers Circles has played a major role in making my dreams and goals DevC NBI and MSA have given me a platform that made me get the hell out of my comfort zone.

Well from all that and many other motivators and research I have made online, Here is what I have to write about today (Dec 31st, 2020):

### My Developer Environment

This is the setup I use and recommend for programming, from text-editors all the way to Operating Systems and Browsers.

#### Text Editors

There are a lot of text editors, both free and paid options are available for you.

- [**Visual Studio Code**](https://code.visualstudio.com/)
- [Atom](https://atom.io/)
- [Sublime text](https://www.sublimetext.com/)

I use Visual Studio (by Microsoft) Code all the time, that's my go-to text editor. I can't make comparisons with the others because I barely used them. Atom (by GitHub) may have similar functionalities with VScode which are pretty cool too.

I find VScode easy to set up and also one can sync the settings so that nothing is lost or changed when re-installing or lost laptop.

vscode has integrated git and GitHub and the terminal which makes work easier when dealing with version control.

#### Operating Systems

As this mostly depends on your computing device, I have always used and advised using any Linux distributions.

I use Ubuntu and it's working pretty fine with me. It's like it was built for developers, after all, it has python and apache preinstalled.

On the other hand, I've always fancied using MacOS, I'll probably get a Macbook soon and enjoy the cool developing environment the mac os has to offer.

Windows OS is a good option too but I rarely use it for my personal stuff. But I don't love coding in a windows environment because of the long processes or maybe I'm used to working with the terminal mostly.

My advice would be to go with the one you are comfortable with.

#### Version Control

I am more comfortable using git with GitHub altogether. Recently GitHub introduced GitHub CLI. A pretty useful terminal interface for working directly with Github web-based operations like creating a repo pull requests, issues, and more.

Mercurial is also a great one but I have never used it professionally with GitHub.

That sums up a basic developer environment and tools I do recommend.