My development environment

Sun, 27 Dec 2020 19:00

I use the following software for web development:

Stack: LAMP via WSL

Operating system: Windows and Linux.

From the beginning I've been developing websites for a Linux environment. Now that WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) has arrived I can develop in Linux from Windows. Whatever reasons I had for switching OS's are no longer. Before WSL I used XAMPP.

Server: Apache

About ten years ago I started out using Apache, and being familiar with it it was my server of choice most recently. I wouldn't mind switching to NGINX all that much.

Database: MySQL / MariaDB

I could be wrong, but I believe MySQL / MariaDB is still most popular in the PHP community. Struggling with putting together more advanced queries in this relational database (e.g. recursive ones) graph databases seemed quite attractive, but I don't want to switch yet. It's fine for now.

Proramming language: PHP

I did enjoy my exploration of NodeJS and ASP.NET Core seems very useful, but PHP's popularity keeps me from changing languages. Having used many programming languages I would switch if there was sufficient reason. If I get very comfortable with a PHP framework this might change, though.

Code editor: Microsoft Visual Studio Code

At the moment I'm very content using Microsoft's Visual Studio Code. I think it's popularity is well-deserved; it's fast, comes with loads of extensions, has excellent integration with WSL and is free!

It did take a while to arrive at VS Code; less powerful tools get you a long way. I believe I started out with Notepad++. I enjoyed using Emacs for a while, but appreciated MATLAB's IDE as well. After a timeout I started again in Brackets; not a great experience. Longing for more integration of development tools (XDebug, git) I gave NetBeans a try. Loving the IDE experience and realizing VS Code was even more popular, my curiosity won.

As extensions I use VS Code's Remote Development (for its seamless support for files in WSL and over SSH), PHP Intelephense and PHP Debug.

Version Control: GIT

It goes almost without saying. I worked without VCS for quite a while, but especially when working on a team that is frustrating. I wouldn't want to do without.

Other

Google Chrome

Somehow I switched from Firefox to Chrome.

Windows Terminal

Having used Ubuntu as a desktop OS I greatly appreciated its terminal. These days Windows has a nice one as well.

Postman

Very useful when it comes to testing API's.