Coding Essentials

Basic skills and tools every (Web) Developer should know.

Mandatory

Opinionated

Choose an equivalent tool to your liking.

Touch Typing

Touch typing is an important skill for developers because it allows you to write code more quickly and efficiently. When you touch type, you do not need to look at the keyboard to find the keys, which means you can focus more on the code you are writing. Additionally, touch typing can help to prevent repetitive strain injuries, which can be common among developers who spend long hours typing. It also allows you to be able to easily switch between multiple different workstations without having to adjust to a different keyboard layout each time. Being able to type quickly and accurately will also help to improve your productivity and reduce the amount of time they spend on coding. This ultimately leads to more time for debugging and problem solving, which are crucial aspects of a developer’s job.

Git

Git is one of the most important tools for developers because it allows you to track changes in your code and collaborate with other team members more effectively. Git allows you to save different versions of their code, called commits, which means that you can easily revert to an earlier version if you encounter problems. It also allows multiple people to work on the same codebase at the same time without having to worry about conflicts or overwriting each other’s work. Additionally, Git enables distributed development, meaning that you can work on a local copy of the code and later merge it with the central copy, you do not need to be connected to a central server

Git also provides powerful branching and merging capabilities, which helps to work on multiple features simultaneously. This enables you to easily create new branches for different features or bug fixes, and then merge those changes back into the main codebase when they are ready. This also allows for easy testing and isolation of bugs.

By using a Git hosting service like GitHub or GitLab, developers can easily share their code with others, review and collaborate on each other’s work, track issues, and even contribute to open-source projects. In total, Git is an essential tool for every developer as it allows you to manage and collaborate on your code more effectively, which helps to improve the quality and productivity of any your work.

pnpm

Yes, you probably think, it should be npm. But pnpm is just a better package manager. It is faster, uses less disk space and is more reliable. It also has a better dependency tree. And it just uses the npm registry, same as yarn. So why not use it instead? Anyway you should be comfortable with a package manager. And if you are not, you should be still.

Markdown

This post ist written in markdown, and most of the time documentation is as well. It is not that hard, and you can learn it in a few minutes.

SSH

THe most important tool for remote access. You should be able to use it without looking at the documentation.

curl

You should be able to use curl to download files from the internet. It is a very powerful tool and is also used to access APIs.

vim

The go to editor for developers. It is not that hard to learn, and you can be productive in no time.

zsh

Bash on steroids. It is a lot more powerful and has a lot of plugins.

tmux

Manage multiple terminals in one window. Makes life easier for server admins.

Last updated: 13 Okt 2022 :: Luis Höfer