So, you want to get in to web development, or you think you already are. You have you hack version of Dreamweaver and you can push things around in design view, or you downloaded some templates from somewhere and you figured out how to add your “bevel emboss” logo into it. You’re ready to start kickin ass and taking names! I was once like this like many others before me, but i met a seasoned Ruby developer through a project i was hired to do CSS work for and he showed me the true light of the web world. Im not saying that DW isnt good, i have just come to realize that to really have a grasp on the “true” web, you reallly need to dig into the guts of what your building and not just mash crap up in design view. so with that being said…
As a developer you’ll find that there are many many tools that can all get you where you need to be, and its a matter of taste and how comfortable these tools are to you. So if you’re a windows guy then you just have bad taste…j/k here are a few tools that we here at the cube prefer.
Mac Mac Mac -
I actually have a Ubuntu box as well, but I am a Mac guy for life, not that you cant develop on other platforms, I just think that the Mac out performs any other machine on the planet and the last thing i want when im working is a box that craps out or hangs etc.. So i would suggest saving a few extra bucks and buying a MAC. Even the mac minis are a supreme machine
Ruby, Rails, jQuery -
The core of our development efforts.
Ruby, because its the greatest programming language on earth.
Rails, because its a fantastic Ruby based web development framework, and
jQuery, because it makes javascript easy and a lot of fun to code. I wont go into too much detail on these as most posts will be about these.
Textmate -
When it comes to writing code i have used
Netbeans which is an
IDE (integrated development environment). Its a good tool if you like IDE’s and the other
IDE is
Ruby Mine which gets a lot of praise from Ruby guys that like IDEs. I personally think they are heavy and clunky and dont really care for them.
Textmate is my editor of choice. It has color coding, a nice snippets feature, and there are a lot of great
FREE bundles to help enhance it with a lot of really nice features. It loads fast and simply gets the job done without hiccups. Also you start to notice that in many many screencasts, Textmate is the editor being used, so it can help a noob follow along a little better. it costs about $50 bucks but is so worth it.
SequelPro –
When it comes to web applications using
SQL based database back ends, I
WAS a long time user of a
FREE application called Cocoa MySQL. This has now transitioned into a program called
Sequel Pro. This is a fantastic
GUI type tool for managing your databases. it allows you to not only manage local (on your machine) databases, but remote (on your server) databases as well. Very easy to use and
FREE. Although i suggest you donate even a few bucks to these projects to give back to these great tools that make our development lives easier.
Firefox –
Unless you live under the Microsoft rock, youve probably heard of, and hopefully use,
Firefox. Firefox is one of the greatest tools for web development. Not only is it a great, and
IMO, the best browser out there to experience the web with, it also has the ability to add plug-ins. These plug-ins make a developers life a lot easier. The most noted are
Firebug,
Web Developer Toolbar, and
YSlowPhotoshop -
Not so much a dev tool, but a tool non the less. For those that are doing both design and development,
Photoshop IMO is a must have. There are alternatives like
GIMP or
Inkscape that are free from the open source community, but I find that Photoshop is the greatest tool for image manipulation and optimization, and graphics. You can also use Illustrator in conjuction with, but i find that i can create about 95% of everything i need in Photoshop. This is the tool I will be using in future graphic blogs and tutorials.
