Evolution of using IDEs & Text Editors through my career
This time I am just sharing my experience of using different IDEs throughout my entire career over the last 12 years. It’s going to refresh lots of memories. So let’s begin.
1. Dreamweaver
I remember using Dreamweaver Version 8 as the very first IDE in my career. I have built so many static sites using Dreamweaver as it was always a drag-drop thing and all the HTML code was generated automatically. Obviously, the final product had a very bulky code which is a pain to edit. Funny thing, it used to add all the inline styles and not a separate CSS file. Those were the days when layouts were built using HTML Tables.
It was also the first IDE I used to learn PHP. In those days here in India, we were not able to get an internet connection that easily. So what I used to do was, I downloaded the Help file(.chm) provided by PHP developers and used it to train myself in learning PHP. And yeah, on windows you have to use an IIS server to compile PHP-based websites. It was like a miracle to make it work for the first time 🙂
2. Geany
Moving ahead to learning PHP, I got my interest in Linux OS. I learned how to set up a LAMP server which obviously includes Apache, MySQL, and PHP. I moved completely to Linux OS and as there was no support for Dreamweaver on Linux, I decided to use Geany IDE that comes with Linux (Ubuntu). Geany became one of my favorite editors as it was just a plain text-based editor but still, it used to autocomplete all the HTML and PHP codes.
It was the time when I launched my very first website welancers.com. In fact, I wrote a blog article on Geany editor over there.
3. Notepad++
Yes, I moved back to Windows as Ubuntu Linux started giving really weird updates and I also started getting so many jobs that required Adobe Photoshop (version 7 as I remember). Also, it was the time when Windows 7 Launched which was & is still one of the best Windows Version. Notepad++ was one of the fastest text editors at that time. Also, it was very powerful as sometimes I used to open up huge SQL files and edit the queries in it directly. And it never got stuck from those chunky files. Still, Notepad++ didn’t have the autocomplete feature for HTML and PHP tags. So it was kind of a totally raw coding experience. But you can say it was the only Text editor or IDE that existed on Windows OS. I remember using lifehacker.com’s own utility called Texter. It is a tool in which you store some code snippets and assign a shortcode. And while typing anywhere e.g MS Word, Notepad, etc. if you type that shortcode and press the TAB key, it places the whole code snippet over there. I used to have so many code snippets stored in it.
After a few years, Notepad++ developers launched an updated version that had Plugins support that lets you add all the auto-completion and other features which every IDE should have.
4. Sublime Text 2 & Sublime Text 3
To be honest, I have no reasons why I shifted from Notepad++ to Sublime Text IDE. It’s just I used to watch so many video tutorials on YouTube and most of them were using Sublime Text IDE so I decided to upgrade myself with it. But later on, I started using new frameworks like Bootstrap, LESS, SASS, etc. And Sublime text has extra packages for everything. Also, the multiple cursor feature was a sweet feature. I used Sublime Text 2 for around 2 years and then Shifted to Sublime Text 3 just to update myself.
5. Visual Studio Code
It is just this year 2017 when I decided to move ahead from using Sublime Text 3 to this new IDE Visual Studio Code which is provided by Microsoft for free. This is one of the best IDE I have seen till now on Windows. It has all the features provided by Sublime Text and also it supports extensions for almost everything which you can find directly from within the IDE. It is not just an IDE, You can also manage your Git Repo using VS Code, You can also send REST APIs using VS Code. There are extensions for almost everything.
I believe there are a lot more better and powerful IDEs but most of them are Paid. Why waste money typing a code if you can get the best IDE for free?
I hope you geeks liked this post. It is just something I have been planning to post for a very long time and today finally I did it.