My Development Workflow (2023)

April 10, 2023 · 2 min read

Setting up a new laptop? Here is a walkthrough of the tools and software I use as a developer. This applies to both Windows and Mac.

Chrome: preferred browser; supports running in no-CORS mode which can be useful during development
VSCode: my go-to IDE. Features/copilot. Read this article
Postman: highly recommended app used for testing APIs (local or production).

Node.js: Node.js binaries (I highly recommend setting up nmv as well, which allows you to switch between Node versions for different projects)
Homebrew: package manager for MacOS
Git: make sure to install git (note: it is included with MacOS)
GitHub: login to your GitHub account and configure email/username

Need to create diagrams or thumbnails? The following online tools are perfect for just that:

GIMP: photo editor (free version of Photoshop). Not as beginner friendly, but useful for creating graphics/logos.
Excalidraw: user-friendly graph drawing software
Draw.io: advanced graph drawing software with image search

That concludes our minimum developer laptop setup, I hope you found this article useful. Feel free to reach out with additional suggestions as well!

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