Developers Toolbox

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Today I was asked what tools I use in my everyday work. The funny thing is… I don't have any must-have tools, most of them are easily replaceable.

So, I'm a web developer / programmer who mostly focuses on the back-end, you know, making sure the comments get saved in the database and the user can log in…that sort of stuff that most visitors take for granted.

I'm a big time supporter of Linux so my work is done using my favourite distro, Linux Mint at the moment. Occasionally, running Windows in a virtual machine is required to do some testing.

The main body of my work is done alternating between my trusty (programmers) text editor (Kate, Komodo Edit, Notepad++, gEdit, Geany + a dozen more) and a web browser, but lately I've settled on using PhpStorm, which is an awesome IDE designed for, you guessed it, PHP.

The browser is Chrome with addons like a colorpicker, a ruler and debugger - Chrome's built in Inspect tool is quite good. Say what you want about Firebug, I'm happy with Chrome. Of course I occasionally use other browsers too.

I've yet to mention the most powerful tool in any developers toolbox. Can you guess? Where do you go when you want some help or information? You Google it. Stackoverflow and Google are developers best friends.

The Terminal (Konsole for KDE) also plays a major part in my work from moving files to creating a new release using SSH. I must say, /bin/bash is the greatest tool any developer could wish for…except the ones mentioned above. :)

Linux, IDE, Browser and Terminal - that's about all I need. There are others of course like Apache running on the background and PhpMyAdmin/ on the server… but mostly, all I need are those four.

What tools are you using? What's your favorite editor/IDE and why?