Development Candy: My list of goodies.

A while ago, I wrote a blog post about my most beloved ingredients I use in my electronics projects. Today I share an other list of daily used ingredients: my most used development environments.

In no particular order the list below shows you my most used frameworks, and programming languages I tend to use for business and spare time projects.

Laravel

In the past, I wasn’t really a big fan of frameworks. Most frameworks appeared to be bloated and cumbersome to use. Until I discovered Laravel. I my opinion, Laravel is the most beautiful, powerful and easy to learn PHP framework. When I discovered Laravel (version 3) it still was relatively unknown. Today it is one of the most (if not the most) used PHP frameworks. An amazing job, by an amazing (and super nice) guy Taylor Otwell.

If you’re looking for a way to improve your PHP work, start exploring Laravel!

Check out the following Laravel resources:

Laravel.com
Laracasts.com
CodeBright (unfortunatly does not cover version 5)
#Laravel on Freenode

Angular.js

Angular.js is one of those typical frameworks you bump into every now and than. Unfortunately it really tends to scare you when they start talking about directives and modules. It took me a while before I really started exploring this clients side application framework. The learning curve is quite steep. But if you hang in there, you will be rewarded!

No more ugly jQuery bloated sites, but beautiful model view bindings. One small tip: If you want to develop something genius in Angluar, chances are it’s already includes in the framework. So check the documentation before you start wasting your time on reinventing the wheel!

Dare to explore angular? Check out these sites:

Node.js

I’m sure you’ve once heard about Node.js. This platform is buit on Chrome’s Javascript runtime and makes Javascript and awesome development environment. Want to built your own Socket server? Check! Want to built a simple Webserver? Check! Want to built your own webcrawler? Check! Node.js is extremely versatile and easy to get up and running. Since it’s able to run on a Raspberry Pi, it’s a perfect ingredient for IoT development.

Exploring Node.js will help you improve your javascript skills but more important: will be a perfect ingredient for many, many, many hours of development fun.

Want to jump right in? Check out these links:

Swift

As an Apple fanboy, I always wanted to built my own apps. After some months of studying Objective C, I managed to throw together some decent apps. I succeeded, but it took a lot of hair pulling before I got the result I wanted. When Swift was born things changed. Of course, it still has it’s flaws and it isn’t total replacement for every piece of Objective C. But boy, iOS App development became so much more fun! If you want to built your own apps, don’t be afraid … Just go for it!

Checkout these links to unleash your inner App developer:

Git

Now, if I learned one thing in the past few years it is that you are never to be able to remember what changes you’ve made to your files. Do I only need to upload a new index.php? Or did I change my config.php as well? What did I do yesterday? And where did I leave those backup copies of my changed files? Git is the way to go if you want to use version control. Admittedly: it looks scary as hell with those branches, commits and merges. But If you get the hang of it you never want to go back again! Spend some time to learn Git, if will save you a lot of tears in the future!

Looking for some Git resources? Check out the following links:

That’s all?

Of course not! I could go on and on. But the list above is probably my most used list of development goodies. Additionally, there still is a lot I’d like to learn. Like C++, OS X Development and Unit Testing. But as we all know: time is more limited than the possibilities! ;)

Any good suggestions complementary to the list above? Leave a comment down below!