Tools used are important

Obviously, we need more tools and we need better tools. In software development, tools are important, but they are often underestimated.

Imagine for a moment that we still needed to use FTP for deployment! Imagine network debugging and troubleshooting performance issues without browser-based developer tools! Imagine how your JavaScript coding efficiency will drop if you don’t use ESLint and Prettier!

If for some reason in JavaScript development you are forced to leave only one plugin for the code editor, choose ESLint.

Any tool that shortens the feedback loop when writing code is a great addition. Bret Victor’s thought of inventing instant visual representations of what we create was an eye-opener for me. Using and perfecting tools is one way to get closer to this bright future. If you haven’t seen Bret’s performance yet, be sure to watch it.

When I find a great tool, I only regret not using it before. The better the tool, the better you write programs with it. Seek, use, and value them, and if you can, improve.

The choice of language is important. Type safety is important. The best thing that has happened to the JavaScript language is TypeScript (and Flow). Static code analysis is more important than you think. If you don’t use it, you are, in effect, vulnerable to possible unknown problems in the future. Don’t write code without static typing. If the chosen language does not have static typing, you either need to change the language or find a transcompiler for it: today they are already smart enough to work with comments in the code, and it seems to me that for languages ​​that do not support static typing, transcompilers will soon become standard tool.