Integrated Development Environment, commonly shorten as IDE, is something that exists among the modern Development Environment today. Imagine the common text editors software such as Notepad on Windows, or TextEdit on Mac, we can theoretically write the code and save it as the correct extension file, such as *.py, *.java, etc.. However, this requires us to learn every syntax of the code, as well as time consuming in terms of managing the working directory in the project. Therefore, the blog article “Understanding Modern Development Environments: A Complete Guide” by Matthew LeRay, will help us how to easily manage the development environment process in terms of the versatility.

In summary, the blog article gives us the basic introduction surrounding the definition of Development Environment. It is about comprehensive setup of hardware and software tools that software developers use to create and maintain software systems, along with other elements such as Developing, Testing, Staging, and Production Environments. The article highlights how IDE compared to traditional text editors process, which what we know today are syntax highlighting and code completion, and more highlights on the point of time consuming, enhancement of developer proficiency, and customization tools. And lastly, the article highlights the importance of development environment, where the goal is for enhancing developer productivity and ensuring high-quality software output.

I choose this blog article personally due to my own curiosity of “What if I try using a text editor software on my computer to write code?” The article did give a basic introduction in terms of the long evolution where IDE is formed from the traditional use of Text Editors. Reflecting on what I’ve learned using VS Code, it is not just basic functionality such as code completion and syntax highlighting, the versatility of IDE expands to the advanced features, such as integrated version control, and collaboration tools, in order to catch up with time management process as the complexity of the project grows over time. Overall, this blog article helps me learn that I can’t simply just rely on the text editors software, such as Notepad or TextEdit, as mentioned from the introduction of this blog post. And the reasons for why not can be seen as I started to get touch on the higher complicated project, where using an IDE such as VS Code would reduce the time process, as well as further advantages such as working with collaborations team, compared to solo development.

In my opinion, it’s easy get familiar with advanced, and modern Development Environments, where I think collaboration and time management could reduce the complexity of managing the project in the real world. Hence, trying to setup the crucial elements such as the right IDE, Version Control System, can be the good start when working with the modern Development Environment, to expand my versatility when working on with necessary tools to enhance the development proficiency, and for the overall production enhancement.

Blog Article: https://speedscale.com/blog/modern-development-environments/

From the blog CS@Worcester – Hello from Kiet by Kiet Vuong and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

One of the interesting blog articles I found is about different version control system developers used, in the process of managing software over time. During this time, when we’ve been mostly using Git in this process, this article talks about different version control systems, other than Git, has been existed in the past. Two of the version control systems the article mentions are Apache Subversion (SVN) and Mercurial. The article gives the overview of existence from previous years, in terms of Apache Subversion, it’s the system that maintains source code in a central server, as well as how it works great for a centrally located team. And in terms of Mercurial, it has its own easy access for most developers to hosting through Fog Creek Software, which is now Glitch.

The reason I choose this blog post is to learn more about the existence of other version control systems that appear alongside Git, as well as the advantages of those systems, and how each of the systems appeared to be the top choice among the developers over time. When we only focus on Git throughout the course, I personally can understand the structure where everybody can fork, clone, and branches in writing code, then contribute to the change of the repository. I also learn that git is more easier to use when managing version control through issues, commits and pull requests, where I found it more interactive and highly valuable in teamwork and collaboration.

Therefore, for the other version control systems, although such as the structure in Apache Subversion is about the same as how we use Git, the dependent on a centralized SVN server could bring less agile when committing changes to the overall repository. According to Quentin Headen, in summary, the centralized SVN server will also require the network connection to be always running in order to commit changes to the repository, or otherwise you can’t commit at all. The second drawback that they also have mentioned, is the heavy branching system, where branches are difficult to remove, or it could be impossible to remove the branch at all. In my opinion, this is another clear perspective to learn that there are disadvantages when hosting a repository on a centralized server, while a distributed version control system would be preferred, giving the developers the flexibility when working on the codebase to address the issues that centralized version control systems occurred.

After reading this blog article, I learned more about the two types of version control system, which are centralized and distributed version control. Although Git is popular dues to its strong platform and built-in user base, others could choose the centralized system for enterprise teams in terms of scalability. In my opinion, it would still depend on which type of project should I work on, and choosing the preferred version control system will help me easier in keeping track of project developments, ensuring the version is up to date and accessible for all users.

Link to Blog Article: https://stackoverflow.blog/2023/01/09/beyond-git-the-other-version-control-systems-developers-use/

From the blog CS@Worcester – Hello from Kiet by Kiet Vuong and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.