Coding Tools and Resources

Learning to code isn’t just about studying the syntax of a language and memorizing commands. If you don’t have the tools and resources needed to test and express that language, you won’t be able to challenge and refine your skills.

Github

You can use GitHub to create a personal project, whether you want to experiment with a new programming language or host your life’s work. Any kind of file can be uploaded to GitHub but it’s designed particularly for code files and is hugely popular. It provides access control and several collaboration features such as bug tracking, feature requests, task management and wikis for every possible project. GitHub reports having more than 14 million users and more than 35 million repositories, making it the largest host of source code in the world.

Text Editor

If you are serious about learning to code, you will spend much of your time working in a simple text editor. Finding the right one for you, and for the language you are working with, may take a bit of experimentation but this process is completely worth the effort. All personal computers come with text editors built in. If you’re on a PC, then your built-in text editor is Notepad. If you’re on a Mac, there isn’t a program exclusively designed for writing code. However, you can set up TextEdit to work as a text editor by going into Preferences and selecting the Plain Text radio button. Popular text editors for coders and programmers include: Sublime Text, Notepad++ and Vim.

 Heroku

If you are developing a web app, you will need to host it before people can access it. GitHub can host your code but that doesn’t mean that end-users will be able to use the working app. This is where a service like Heroku comes into its own. Heroku is a cloud platform that lets you build, deliver, monitor and scale apps, the fastest way to go from idea to URL, bypassing all those infrastructure headaches. It makes the processes of deploying, configuring, scaling, tuning, and managing apps as simple and straightforward as possible, so that you can focus on what’s most important: building great apps that delight and engage customers.

Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for professional and amateur programmers. It’s built and run by users as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With its users help, the site is building a library of detailed answers to every question about programming. This site is all about getting answers; it’s not a discussion forum so there’s no chit-chat. Good answers are voted up and rise to the top and the best answers show up first so that they are always easy to find.

The key to getting the most from Stack Overflow is to focus on questions concerning actual problems you have faced. Include details about what you have tried and exactly what you’re trying to do. Tags make it easy to find interesting questions. All questions are tagged with their subject areas. Each can have up to 5 tags, since a question might be related to several subjects.

 
Integrated Development Environment

Integrated Development Environments, unlike text editors, offer a complete coding environment. This makes it easier for some programming beginners to get to grips with a new language. Integrated Development Environments, also known as Code Editors, are software applications that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of a source code editor, build automation tools and a debugger. Most modern IDEs

have intelligent code completion.

One of our favourite IDE’s is Aptana Studio 3. Aptana allows you to develop and test your entire web application using a single environment. There’s support for the latest browser technology specs such as HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Ruby, Rails, PHP and Python.

Snippset

Snippet is a programming term for a small region of reusable source code, machine code or text. Snippets are often used to clarify the meaning of an otherwise “cluttered” function or to minimise the use of repeated code that is common to other functions. Snippets is a powerful application for Mac and Windows that stores the most valuable pieces of code that you can reuse in different projects many times. The main idea is to make the process of reusing as easy as possible to avoid wasting your valuable time on writing the same code again. You can download the Snippets manager free from http://snippets.me/.

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