#how to become a python full stack developer

  Agent Siren (Jimin) looked like a god among men, well actually that was a lie. Most of the agents around here looked other worldly. But- Agent Siren…

 Wow.

   He was simply training with a punching bag, mauling the thing till it fell to the floor. He labored his breaths for a few moments and caught sight of you staring at him. He gave a simple smirk, and raked his hand through his hair. His eyes never diverted  from yours. His gaze flashed a fiery color and with that, he turned back to his task. Agent Vex watched the exchange with annoyance. “Come on.” He quickly whisked you away, in hopes of severing the newly formed tie between you and Agent Siren.

But even she knew it would be in vain, Agent Siren… once his interest was piqued, there was nothing that could keep him from seeking it out. And now, his sights were set on you. 

“Now continuing on, this is where your precinct trains. Though, on lax hours you’re allowed to roam anywhere in your precinct’s division.” 

This World, Earth, was now run by a single government. For it to work there had to be a lot of power, a lot of people, a lot of checks and balances. The Military was one of them. Now you work for them, you’re part of Precinct 73. This contains most of Eastern Asia. What used to be China, Russia, Japan, Korea, and many other countries, was now just Precinct 73. Then the precinct was split into divisions. Each and every unit has authority over a certain factor to aid the well being of the people who live in the precinct. Your unit, is over Drugs and Alcohol. Not the worst job. Unit 2 has to deal with “Justice,” the nice term that the government uses. Justice is keeping people from fighting or killing. Not fun.

“Most of your Unit, Unit 5, spends their time in the tavern. Drinking here is allowed, as you can see.” Agent Vex explained as we passed what seemed to be the tavern. “But only in the time that you are not assigned something within the next 12 hours. Other than that, it’s free.”

 “Following along, this is the diner-“ we reached the extremely vintage looking restaurant as we peered through the hallway glass as we passed by. “The diner is open to all of your precinct all day, every day.” You think you’d be spending most of your free time, there. 

Then there was the library, the main cafeteria, the armory, the medic, and a bunch of other useless things, till you finally made it to your room. Which is where Agent Vex left you to your own devices. It was getting late but you had barely eaten all day. The induction took much longer than you anticipated. You decided to go ahead and test out the diner, see if it was what you dreamed of in the past 30 minutes.

   ...

  Almost No one was in the diner that evening, aside from the lady working the front and the duo seated in one of the booths. Taking a seat far from them, you picked up on of the menus. This was a peaceful atmosphere, the music was from the 1960s, a bit more than two centuries ago. Shocking, isn’t it? You enjoyed this music.

 It was comforting, in an odd way. “So you’re the new kid, huh?” A waitress greeted you, pen and paper in hand, all of her hair slicked back in a puffy bun. You smiled, letting out a short laugh. “That obvious?” You asked. “We very rarely have new people show up to the diner, and we saw you walking with Agent Vex a bit ago.” This woman had a kind aura about her. She had an intimidating gaze, one that challenged your own, but her warm smile and composure helped tone down the darkness of her eyes. “Agent Viper.” You greeted, giving a simple nod. “Imani.” She smiled. She wasn’t an agent? Huh. 

“Are you ready to order?” She asked. 

You nodded and told her what you wanted, so she wrote it down, and then walked back behind the double doors to the kitchen.

“Is anyone sitting here?” 

Your head snapped up at yet another unfamiliar voice, but this time… it was some Agent that you hadn’t seen yet.

 “No?” 

You idiot.This dude has PLAYBOY written on his damn forehead. And you just gonna go along with it like that. Alright.

He slipped into the seat across from you, a charming smile on his face. “So, you’re new, right?” 

You nodded silently.

 “Are you getting along well?” He questioned. 

Once again, you nodded. Wow, character development. Right?

 The Agent sighed and grabbed your hand. “I’m Agent Heath. If you ever need anything, I’ll be happy to help. Ok?” His eyes were untrustworthy, but his smile was charming. 

A hand slammed down on the table between you two. Agent Siren, was facing Agent Heath with a glare that could commit genocide. “She’s not a toy to play with, Heath. Why don’t you head to where your subunit belongs? I do believe that Vex wouldn’t be very happy to hear that you’re missing training.” Agent Heath seathed at his words, getting up grumbling and trudging away. 

Agent Siren smirked and turned to you. “Hi, I’m Siren, Unit 2, subunit 1, you are?” He asked, filling Agent Heath’s absence. “Agent Viper, Unit 5, subunit 1.” You replied shortly. 

This was the man Vex warned you about? He didn’t seem too bad? Heath seemed much worse. 

Agent Siren gave you a smile. “Well, I have training to get to, so I’ll see you around, Yea?” You smiled in return, not sparing a word. So he took his leave and exited the dinner, but not without sparing you one last glance before he walked out the door.

 “Looks like you’ve got loverboy’s eyes on you.” Imani said from your side, your order in her hands. You scoffed out a laugh. “Yea, sure.” 

“Oh, no, Agent Siren is totally interested in you. But, he isn’t exactly the relationship type, so be careful. Although, if you do give him the time of day, he will treat you well while he’s around. Agent Heath on the other hand, is just a One Night Stand type. So I’d steer clear if I were you, especially since he’ll hold it over your head.” She explained.

 “How do you know so much?” You questioned her as she finished setting all of your food in front of you. 

“Honey, this diner is full of gossip.” 

 ...

“So you’re the new Siren Bait?”  Agent Firefly (Hoseok) commented, sliding in the seat next to you, in the uncomfortable cafeteria tables. “Siren Bait?” You scoffed. 

“It’s the nickname for anyone Agent Siren chooses to take interest in. He doesn’t take interest in many, so consider yourself lucky.”  Agent Python (Taehyung) sighed sitting down in front of us, his lunch stacked full. “Feeding an army today?” You mused, a smirk on your face. “Thankfully no, but you may be feeding a mermaid tonight.” He grinned a lewd smile on his face. 

You reached across the table and smacked him across the head. “We’re not in the same unit! That could never happen! The higher-ups would get onto us so quick.” You rolled your eyes. 

“Aw, are we talking about Viper’s poor love life?” Agent Beluga (Jin) snickered, sitting down next to Mamba who was joined by Agent Mamba (Yoongi). You huffed, crossing your arms annoyed.

 This was your subunit. The five of you were the top dogs of your unit, being Subunit 1. Meant to take the highest risk, highest reward missions that only you could handle. “Cheer up. We have a mission this afternoon, you get to go on your first mission!” Agent Python smirked.

 You rolled your eyes and just continued eating your meal.

 ...

    “Viper, your six.” You whipped around, just in time to catch the fist flying at you. You quickly dropped the man to the ground, knocking him out with a single punch. “Thank you.” You replied quietly to Agent Mamba, who had given you the warning through the wonderful tech that allowed for you all to communicate with each other.

 The Mission was going fairly well. Firefly and Beluga had already obtained the cargo, using the plane it was loaded in to route it back to your Precinct’s Headquarters. Which now just left Mamba using a sniper from the compound’s watch tower, and Python and you searching for the crew that was about to smuggle that plane into precinct 32, around olden day California and Mexico. 

“Found them.” Mamba notified. “Northeast corner of the compound, light gray brick building, 20 feet tall. Looks like they’re playing poker.” You spotted the building and rushed towards it with silent footsteps. 

You creeped up to the side, carefully peering in through the crack in the slightly ajar door. “Six men, two armed, three are drunk.” You whispered. “I’m in position.” Python said. “Go.” Mamba commanded. You burst through the doors, aiming your pistol at the necks of each. The guns you had were filled with tranquilizer disks, that would attach to open skin and knock them out, which can be used as a shock collar from there with a remote control. The Six men were all out on the floor within second. You caught three, Python got two, and Mamba caught one with his Sniper Rifle. “No more heat signatures on the radar. Unit 2, subunit 1 will be there shortly to apprehend all civilians involved.” Agent Vex said, her voice coming over the coms for the first time this mission. 

The Mission was a success. “Alright, the lawbooks are coming! Let’s get out of here!” Agent Python said. “We have to wait till they arrive.” You told him, not wanting any assailant to get away. “You just want to stay because Siren is in that subunit, don’t you?” Python teased. “What? Siren is in that subunit?” You asked, genuinely surprised. “Oh don’t act all-“ 

“She’s right, Python, we need to wait.” Mamba said, cutting Python off. Python sighed.

 “Who is right?” An unfamiliar voice cut in the coms. Mamba let out a dry laugh. “Agent Tetra, nice to know you like to listen to coms outside of your unit.” 

“Don’t be so uptight Mamba, Siren just wanted to see if his new bait was still alive after her first mission.” Agent Tetra teased. “She has a name.” The all to familiar voice of Agent Siren growled. “Oh yes, Agent Viper, is it? She can hear us, right?” Tetra was pissing you off more and more by the second with his taunting voice. “Tetra, shut it. You know that this is against the rules. You will not get one of my members in trouble.” Mamba hissed, obviously annoyed.

 “Ah, you’re no fun.” Then the voices ceased.

 “Viper, stay away from Siren. You hear me?” Mamba asked. 

“Loud and clear.” You replied. 

Your words held no weight, though. Even you could tell. 

...

      You held yourself underwater, keeping your breath in your lungs, attempting to maximize your time. The water was calming and comfortable as you ignored the forming of the burn in your lungs. It slowly began to increase, making it hard to stay underwater. You shot up to the surface, breaching the water. You stopped your timer that lay on the edge of the pool. 00:04:56 You groaned. You have yet to break 5 minutes. You still had to be at, at least, 00:06:30 by the end of this week. You had a mission that required you to hold your breath for at most 7 minutes. You were nowhere near it. If you weren’t, they would send Agent Anaconda instead. Agent Anaconda was a man you loathed. His very being pissed you off from day one of your training. 

In your peripheral vision, you could see a pair of feet standing before you. Your eyes began to follow up the legs, to the abdomen, to the face. 

You tensed up when you saw the breathing noise taking smile of Agent Siren. 

“Um…” You felt dumb. It was as if You couldn’t even form a sentence. He squatted down, sort of dropping to your eye level, but at the same time- unintentionally emphasizing something else….

If you get my drift?

….damn. 

You averted your eyes back to his face, avoiding looking anywhere below that.  “Having a hard time?” He asked. “No. I’m ok.” The words left your mouth sounding much more confident in yourself than you were at this moment. He chuckled, giving a bright smile. “Here. I’ll be right back.” He said and turned to walk away, going straight into the boys restroom. You furrowed your brows, but shook it off. You took a breath before dunking yourself back under water. 

Time ticked by, second by second. When you breached the water, following the intense burning in your lungs, you went to turn off the timer, but it was not in the place you left it. Instead, there were a pair of feet. You were now groping a pair of feet. You looked up to meet the person attached to the feet only to find Agent Siren again… topless. “00:04:59.” He told you, your timer in the palm of his hand. Flustered, you kicked away from the edge of the pool. He slowly got down, putting his feet into the water with the back of his knees pressed against the edge of the pool. He smirked down at you, lazily. You took a relaxed breath of air before disappearing underwater. You didn’t want anything to do with that anymore, so you say underwater for as long as you possibly could. 

Soon your lungs were burning, screaming at you to get some air as your vision began to get hazy. But you wanted nothing more than to avoid the man, whose feet you just groped. But your mind betrayed you, and gave a last ditch effort to get some oxygen. You kicked up, breaching the surface and taking in several gulps of air. “00:06:04.” You looked up at him, shocked, you dropped a whole minute?!? You silently celebrated in your head, now you were one leap closer to your end goal. He dropped down to the floor, letting his feet fall into the pool. “Would you like some help?” He asked, gingerly, a kind smile on his face. “No, it’s ok.” You told him. “Are you-“

 “Siren! Get your ass over here!” One of the sergeants from his unit called. He sighed and quickly got to his feet. “I’ll see you around, Yea?” He smiled warmly before trotting off, leaving you no time to answer. 

    ...

  “You know, you sure are creating quite the debacle.” Imani said, setting down your usual on the table in front of you. You sighed. “I’m not even trying.” You mumbled, frustrated. 

Sensing your distraught, Imani took the seat in front of you. “This isn’t school anymore, Viper. Who cares what they say. There are rules here and cameras. You aren’t breaking any rules, they are. They’ll be the ones in trouble if anything happens. The higher ups don’t care about who has been here longer. So don’t worry. Just be careful, they don’t exactly like for Agents to have close romantic relationships outside of your unit. It takes focus off the task at hand. Speaking of which…” She quickly rose out of the seat, her eyes trained behind you. “Enjoy your food.” Then she rushed off. 

You sighed, and looked down at the plates in front of you. This, was something you enjoyed. 

“Viper?” 

You should’ve known. She was looking behind you. You should’ve known. He’s always there. When isn’t he there? 

You looked up to meet the endearing eyes of Agent Siren. 

“Hey, May I?” He asked pointing at the empty booth. 

You dully nodded. 

“So,” you looked him in the eyes, seeing a small flash that seemed to entice you. His eyes widened and he shook his head as if to rid himself of a bad memory. “You good?” You asked him, slightly concerned. Siren quickly replaced his look of self directed anger with a smile but you could still see the fire in his eyes. “Yes, I’m fine, thank you.” He responded politely. Not what you were expecting. He eyes looked disappointed in himself. What did he do?

 “How are you getting along?” He questioned. “Pretty Well, it hasn’t been too bad.” You said, wincing at your lack luster answer. He just smiled gingerly. 

Suddenly a hand was placed on Siren’s shoulder. Agent Python. “Dude.” They shared a look seemingly having a conversation with their eyes. Siren sighed, obviously losing whatever unspoken argument just occurred. He stood up and walked away, only giving you one last brief glance.

 Python looked at you disappointment in his eyes as if saying ‘Really?’

 “What?” You asked, not understanding what was wrong.

 He just sighed and grabbed your hand. “We have training.” Is all he said before whisking you away. 

      ...

     Grunt after groan escaped your mouth as you landed on the mats as Mamba took his anger out on you. He was pissed that you had been caught talking to Siren for the third time this week. It’s only Tuesday.

 “Get up, Viper.” Mamba snapped.

 You groaned and slowly made your way into your feet. You held your dukes up, but it was futile as Mamba took you down within seconds. He was lithe and nimble. He knew your weak points better than you knew your strengths. 

You sighed laying on the cold mat. 

“Alright, Mamba. I think that’s enough, yea? She put up a good fight.” Firefly said, stepping into the ring. Mamba snuffed his nose with the back of his hand. He threw a towel over his shoulder and walked out the door. You sharply inhaled and rolled over onto your back.

 Staring up at the glass ceiling, you notice how many other agents are watching, as that glass ceiling was their floor. You jump onto your feet slowly trudging over to your water bottle.

 “Not gonna lie, you messed up.” You scoffed at Firefly’s words. “Messed up, how? Siren was the one who talked to me.”

 “Mamba warned you, he’s not happy.” You rolled your eyes, guzzling down the rest of your water bottle. “Well aware.” You clipped. You tossed the empty bottle in the trash walking towards the door only to realize that Siren was standing right outside of the door. He opened it, walking past you and angrily approaching Python. You just continued on your way back to the solidarity of your room, ignoring the looks you received. 

Turning the corner you almost ran into someone but you stopped short and slid out of the way. “Agent Viper! Just the girl I was looking for!” 

Agent Heath. If this day could get any better, that’d be great.

 “So, news is, you and Siren have a whole romance going on.” He said, pulling you forward with an arm around your shoulders. “Has he used his ability to catch you, princess?” 

You let out a growl and yanked on his arm, pulling him over your shoulder, sending him flying. He groaned hitting the ground. “What the hell?!” He snapped. “Stay out of shit you know nothing about and your big ass nose doesn’t belong in.” You hissed, before walking away, quicker than previously. 

...

       “Agent Viper, your attendance is required in room 328.” 

You groaned waking up to the loud voice that rang over the intercoms. You quickly got out of bed, passing by your mirror and trying to help your disheveled appearance. Once it was - somewhat - appropriate, you left your room, headed to room 328, following it on your wrist comp. The wonderful little screen on your wrist that could do just about anything and everything for you. 

You reached the room, walking through the door without a problem. The room was empty aside from the two couches and assorted decorations, such as the plants in the corner.

 You didn’t get much time to survey the room, as the lights flickered off. All that was left was the dim red glow of the emergency lights. Power outage? Here? You back tracked to the door, only to find, it wouldn’t open. You groaned, audibly.

 Arms suddenly wrapped around you, causing you to tense up. “Relax, Viper, it’s just me.”

 “Siren! What the-?! What are you doing?!” You demanded. “Mamba said I could be around you, so long as we aren’t seen together.” His voice was soothing, you almost didn’t care about what he was saying, but then you caught it. You weren’t so far gone in his tricks. “You didn’t think to ask me? If I wanted to be around you?” You questioned, peeling away from his grasp.

 “That’s what I intend to do now.” He grabbed your hand, his thumb rubbing small circles on the back of your palm. Even in the darkness it feels like you could still see the glow of his eyes staring down at you. “What did Heath mean by your ability?” 

The glow rapidly disappeared. 

Siren let out a heavy sigh, the warmth of his hand leaving yours. “You know what I am trained to do, don’t you?” He asked. “Well, everyone has something that correlates with their name, that sets them aside from the rest, so I guess..” you trailed off, unsure if you wanted to continue this conversation. 

“Do you trust me?” He asked. “This is really early on in our relationship to ask-“ 

“Viper!” He cut you off, prompting you to cut to the chase. “No, I don’t.” You replied, curtly. 

He laughed. “Ok, not the answer I was looking for, but do you trust me enough not to hurt you?” He asked further.

 “Yes.” You answered him. 

You could practically feel his smile, but the energy vanished. “Please don’t get mad.” He whispered, barely audible. 

His eyes suddenly glowed brightly, enrapturing your very being. He reached out, his hands grabbing yours. The skin contact made you bubbly, happy in a way you couldn’t even fathom.

 “Hi, Beautiful.” His hand caressed the side of your face. When his hand pulled away, you followed it, carving the feeling. You felt elated, and moreover - you never wanted it to end. 

“Siren~” the word left your mouth whimsically. You were smiling dumbly. You couldn’t see him, but he smiled down at you sadly. He hated seeing you in the state he had gotten so used to seeing everyone in. 

Dumbly in love with him.

 You pushed yourself onto him, wrapping your arms around his neck, you hoisted yourself up tangling your legs around his waist.

 You pressed your forehead to his, staring lovingly into the bright fire-y eyes of his.

 One of his hands trailed across the top of your thigh while the other held beneath you. It felt so so good and so warm. So comforting. You leaned into his neck placing a single kiss on his skin. You leaned back, seeing if he would respond. He didn’t.

 All that occurred was the fading of his bright glowing eyes and the quick loss of overwhelming warmth and giddiness. What scared you the most, wasn’t the fact that he could do that, or the fact that you stayed put where you were - what scared you was that you craved more. You enjoyed it. You jumped off of him, now feeling uncomfortable with the desire that rid you. 

You realized, you felt… 

damp. 

Oh fucking, Hell. 

“Viper?” He questioned. 

You corrected him with your given name, frantically trying to make sense of your rapid change in emotions and the aftermath that it left.

 “Are you ok?” He asked, placing his hands on your shoulders. The lights flickered at that exact moment. Allowing you to see the full extent of his worry before you were both enveloped in darkness once again.

 “Are you mad at me?” He sounded like a little child, afraid of losing their best friend. “No, no. I’m not mad at you.” You dismissed him, quickly stepping away from him trying to rid yourself of the proximity.

 This can’t be happening.. but then again… nobody can see you… No! Bad idea! Idiot! Dumbo! There no chance for you too, You fool!

He called out to you by your name and wrapped his arms around you loosely, pressed up against your back. You shivered, goosebumps raising the hairs on your arms. 

“What’s wrong?” He asked, his voice calm and soothing. “I’m ok.” You dismissed him once again, pulling yourself out of his grasp. You took a seat on the end of couch crossing your legs. 

If Siren took notice, he didn’t mention it. 

He sat near you, seemingly concerned. You angled yourself towards him, thighs still locked together. “Where did you learn to do that?” You asked him, keeping your voice level. “Well, not all agents are scouted, some are made. My parents put me in a prestigious school to make sure that I would become an agent. They knew that if I became an agent, I would be set for life. But, at that school, only the top fourth of the class will become an agent, and on Graduation Day, they give you a gift- an ability moreover. And I got this… gift.” He explained. 

Wow.

 You weren’t sure if this was terrible gift or a great one.

 “Cool.” You mumbled. Cool? Really?!! That’s all you could say? Cool?!

Idiot. 

“How did you get here?” He asked. “Oh, I was scouted.” You said, plainly. But honestly that’s all there was to say. Scouted Agents was the road most traveled. About 95% of the agents were found somewhere within the divisions and the Scouts liked what they saw. So they were offered the job and thrown into a test system. If they pass the test, all memory is wiped of the test.

 For “security’s sake.”

 Nobody believed that. But they didn’t have time to make a deal about it, because then, they get thrown into their precinct. 

“Jimin.” Siren spouted out of nowhere. 

You looked at him confused. “You told me your name earlier, so I figured I should tell you mine. Jimin.” He explained. “Jimin?” You repeated, he nodded. 

You smiled, warmly. No longer so tense and afraid. His hand fell next to your thigh and you could feel the warmth of it.

 But it never proceeded from there. The conversation stayed PG and You both just chatted in about your own interests and simple things. 

That’s good, right? 

RIGHT?!

Agent Siren: Jimin

Agent Firefly: Hoseok

Agent Python: Taehyung

Agent Mamba: Yoongi

Agent Beluga: Seokjin

Agent Viper: You

Online Resources

https://www.w3schools.com/

Starting out, W3 schools will probably be pretty omnipresent for help. They have tutorials for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, ASP, and many other web technologies. They pride themselves in being the largest web developer site, and unfortunately that has a downside. They don’t always update all of their articles to the most current specifications. This is a wonderful resource, as they do a good job of explaining a lot of these concepts in a beginner friendly way, but when you’re ready for nitty-gritty details, it’s almost always best to go with a more specialized developer resource.

https://css-tricks.com/

CSS is a powerful and flexible tool. Every day I see projects where developers have pushed it to new heights, but sometimes it’s a little arcane too. Well the wizards over at CSS-Tricks have collected a large number of articles and tutorials that explain everything from how z-index works to how to use newer layout-centric rules like Flexbox or Grid. If a CSS rule is misbehaving, 9 times out of 10, I can find a clear and concise reason on this site, and more importantly, I find many recommendations on how I can achieve the same effect differently.

https://flexboxfroggy.com/

Speaking of Flexbox, Flexbox Froggy is a one-note kind of resource, but it teaches all of the core concepts behind flexbox, and it can also teach CSS savvy managers why moving to a new layout methodology would benefit your work flow.

https://cssgridgarden.com/

Created by the same developer as Flexbox Froggy, and it does the same thing with Grid concepts.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/

Mozilla’s developers have been at this game a long time, and their resources are next to none. In my opinion, this collection does not do much help a beginner understand, but the trade-off is that once you’re over that initial hurdle, the information you’re looking for is almost always only a few clicks away. This is the first, and often the last, place I go whenever I’m looking to solve a weird JavaScript bug that the rest of the internet is too clever to have encountered, (or to explain why only IE9 is seeing it).

http://php.net/manual/en/index.php

I know PHP isn’t a popular language right now, but it’s powerful, it’s flexible, and it’s still the primary language of the largest and most popular CMS on the planet, for better or worse, WordPress. Especially if you’re going to work freelance, you owe it to yourself to at least be familiar with PHP, and this will be your best friend. It’s no nonsense, and not beginner friendly, but it’s clear, and the comments on the articles are often as helpful as the articles themselves.

https://codex.wordpress.org/Developer_Documentation

Speaking of working in freelance (or even for a firm like I do), I have my own opinions about the way WordPress works, but you’re going to be doing projects in WordPress, and you aren’t going to be able to accomplish them without this. I have a small problem with the way functions and parameters are explained (it isn’t always easy to differentiate how one calls a function manually, or if it is called by filters, or how it is different from they three other functions named roughly the same thing), but I do know that the WordPress core developers work very hard, so there is always a method to the madness, even if you don’t have the key to see it.

https://stackoverflow.com/

When you get to the debugging stage, you’re going to become familiar with Stack Overflow pretty fast, as it almost always dominates the first few google results for a problem. Now, I’ve had developers try to scare me away from using Stack Overflow because it is open for beginners and experts, and sometimes it’s hard to tell quality of answers, but I strongly disagree with that. While it’s true you should always look cautiously at using someone else’s code right out of the box, there are a lot of members of the community that go out of their way to explain what the code is doing, and those are the answers you should be looking for. You don’t have to use their code, but if you can understand why you had the problem in the first place, you grow as a developer, and now have the tools to solve the problem. Stack Overflow is a big part of the Open Source community, so it’s always nice to give back at least as much as you take, so if you see a question you have the answer to, feel free to share.

https://github.com/

Eventually, you’re going to run into a project where you need a plugin developed by someone else, either because you don’t yet have the knowledge or you don’t have the time, but the client needs the functionality. 9 times out of 10 you’ll find what you need on GitHub, and honestly, you should be getting together your own GitHub with plugins and projects of your own. No matter how single purpose they may be, you’d be surprised how useful things can be in very specific situations. GitHub, like Stack Overflow, is a big part of the Open Source community, so it’s always nice to give back when you can. Make suggestions or report problems you have with any projects you pull, and in doing so you’ll make the community a better place.

Applications for Windows Based Developers

Now, for the next section let’s get into some tools. I love gaming, so I have a Windows computer at home. I don’t really know why we’re wasting money on a Windows license at work, but we are so I can mirror the full stack in both locations. Here’s what I use.

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

When I first started, my boss insisted I use Dreamweaver for everything. I have nothing against Adobe, and their products are quality, but Dreamweaver was way more trouble than it was worth. Everything I cared about from Dreamweaver I can do in this free and Open Source program, with some extra functionality I find it extremely hard to mimic in Dreamweaver. Notepad++ is fast, stable, and hugely extendable. If you’re doing this as a full time job, I strongly recommend switching to a dark theme for the sake of your eyes. Blackboard is among my favorites (unless you’re trying to write Python). I also really love its macro functionality, I have a couple of re-used DOM structures programmed in there right now as well as my multi-line comment format.

https://winscp.net/eng/download.php

Arguably, the best part of Dreamweaver is the built in FTP client that lets you push changes directly to the server, but set Notepad++ as your primary editor in this, and suddenly you even have that feature, as this will sync temp folders back to the server. This is probably the best FTP client I’ve seen on Windows, with full support for SFTP and SSH (built on PuTTY) with all sorts of encryption and authentication options. It’s also hugely configurable and fairly dependable. If you’re working on a remote server using a Windows machine, this is probably how you should be accessing the file system.

https://www.putty.org/

I hope that as a web developer you don’t have to learn to be a server administrator, but as a web developer I am telling you you’ll probably have to learn at least a little bit about Unix/Linux server administration, as they are by far the most popular web server stacks out there, and you’ll be controlling them with an SSH client at some points, even if a web interface is available. This is a great one, with all sorts of authentication options, so if (like us) you know you need root access to a server remotely, but you don’t like the idea of protecting that with just a simple password, you can set up Public/Private key pairs with encryption passphrases.

http://www.wampserver.com/en/

Let me be clear on this: WAMP, which stands for Windows Apache, PHP, MySQL, is great to have. It’s good for training, it’s good for prototyping tools without having to wait for a virtualized server to start up, but the differences in environments between running Apache, PHP, and MySQL on Windows versus Linux will bite you eventually. Don’t expect to be able to push anything you worked on in WAMP directly to your Linux based server without having to fix a few problems here and there. That said, I have a number of things I run in my WAMP server all the time (linting, IP geolocation, domain DIGs, and a few others). It’s a great tool, but it isn’t a replacement for a staging server.

https://www.virtualbox.org/

You should be using a virtual machine for your staging server. That way you can simulate things like network communications and how your code will actually be run on Linux. Virtual Box is free and powerful. You’ll need to get ISOs for whatever operating system you intend to run, and you should be aware that at least some versions of Windows have it written into their License agreement that you can’t run them virtualized.

https://www.gimp.org/

Gimp is powerful. I don’t really know how to use it well. It’s always been one of those things where I know I need to sit down and teach myself, but since I’ve fallen far into the trenches of server backend work, I haven’t ever had the motivation. Mostly, I use this to resize images when I notice that a website is loading a 14MB PNG on the homepage for some unknown reason. Please designers, think of the mobile phones, keep total page loads (Including all resources, pictures, scripts, and DOM structure) as close to or below 1MB as you can, especially if your site is supported by ad revenue, as there’s no telling how much the ads will need to load on top of that.

https://tools.stefankueng.com/grepWin.html

GrepWin is an implementation of Grep functionality on Windows. For those of you who aren’t aware, Grep is a terminal tool on Linux/Unix that uses a very efficient algorithm to search through large amounts of text for whatever you define, be it flat text, or something represented by a regular expression. It’s super useful for renaming an included document or global variable, and can really save your bacon if your error reporting is being vague. I like this particular implementation because it has context menu integration, so it’s as easy to use as right clicking in the directory you want to search in and telling it to search. It also supports text replacement with backups, so this simple tool is extremely useful more often than I’d like to admit.

https://gitforwindows.org/

The last tool is an implementation of Git for windows that also includes a Bash terminal. This is important because a lot of developers work in Linux, and so installation directions might only be available as Bash code, this makes it easy to move past that step without being bogged down translating that into Windows CMD code. This is a full implementation of Git, so it comes with all of the version control features and easy project building that Git provides. If you end up working with Electron or Node.JS in general, you’ll end up leaning on this pretty hard.

And that’s it. I’m hoping that later this week I can get into more interesting stuff, but I wanted to have a foundational post of the resources I might reference and the tools I’m using for people to fall back on. It’s the kind of thing I wish I had to reference when I was starting out, especially since all of the tools I’m using now are free and Open Source, and making that change has sped up my workflow significantly, as the only application I’ve listed here with any noticeable boot time is Gimp, something I hated about Dreamweaver every time I had to shut the computer down for whatever reason.

I plan on coming back to this post periodically and updating it as my opinions change, or I become aware of other resources that should be on here. Eventually I’ll also be lining out a software for Linux section, but I’m still shopping around for an affordable and stable Linux development machine.