Building out new projects can be an exciting experience, but which developer tools provide the most comprehensive documentation? A user’s experience matters. Let’s note them here…

My Metric for What Makes for Great Documentation

Everyone is different. So I can only speak for myself when I describe key factors about what makes for great documentation on today’s modern developer platform sites.

It is imperative to remind one another that assumptions are inevitably made when writing for an entire ecosystem of developers, considering that the spectrum ranges from newbie to seasoned. On the developer’s side of things, researching about a technology, regardless of the intended purpose, takes time.

Time is the most valuable resource that we have as people with goals and objectives we aim to complete.

When docs for tools are designed with a vast array of users in mind, it makes for a more inclusive, productive experience on their sites. No piece of documentation is absolutely perfect, but there are some that cater to more of the ecosystem than others, whether it be intentional or not. …

From platforms to languages and frameworks, let’s break down some of the biggest predictions of web development tools rising in popularity for 2019:

1. ReactJS Will Continue to Clean House

Arguably, React.js was 2018’s most popular JavaScript framework. An open source project developed by Facebook and supported by the Developer community worldwide, its expansion and maturity over the years has been quite interesting to witness. First deployed in 2011, there is an undeniable progression visualized below in a usage graph comparing other well-known JavaScript frameworks such as Angular and Vue.js. This year in 2019, the popularity may continue to rise.

The excitement around React’s seamlessness and versatility for both new and seasoned developers is indicative by the continued support it receives from the biggest companies. Getting a web application started up has never been this accessible before with create-react-app installation and setup commands. As a result of so much support, its expansion for developers is exemplified by interoperability with other JavaScript frameworks like TypeScript, innovative backend tools like AWS Serverless, and query languages like GraphQL. …

Want to open your coding projects faster? Want to mitigate moving through various folders with just one simple command? Here’s how to create quick shortcut commands!

The file .bash_profile might really be where all the magic happens for creating shortcut commands in the Terminal! If you’re sort of familiar with the general Unix command line commands that allow you to navigate through your machine via the Terminal, then creating aliases will help optimize your navigation process! It’s pretty easy, too. Here’s how to do it:

1. Make sure you’re going to create these customized commands in the right file.

Navigate to your Terminal. You can simply command+SPACE to bring up the search bar. Type in Terminal and launch it.

Once your in the Terminal, type ls -a to be given a list of files and folders that are both hidden and not hidden. We are looking for the hidden file .bash_profile, for instance, to open and write into in order to create customized shortcut commands for your daily usage. …

Want to seamlessly maneuver through your computer with commands in the Terminal?? Here’s how:

Want to use your Terminal just for fun? Run these commands in your Terminal and learn to get better at interacting more with your machine as opposed to your computer’s User Interface.

7 Commands You’ll Use in this Tutorial

pwd, cd, ls, mkdir, touch, open, nano, and more!

4 Problems You’ll Solve in this Tutorial

• Creating a Python file via the Terminal
• Creating an entire coding project using ONLY Terminal commands
• Writing HTML inside the Terminal via GNU nano
• Rendering your HTML in your browser

Launch your Terminal

Head to your Applications, click on the Utilities folder, and then click on the Terminal!

Customize your Colors

Customize the appearance of your Terminal by heading over to Preferences and toying around with the look that makes you most excited to interact with it! …

The Girl Develop It non-profit organization hosted a 4-part Introduction to Python class at SmartBear Software in Boston — as a developer myself, here’s what I learned from being a TA!

Volunteering has been something I’ve been doing since I was in high school. I volunteered in spaces that truly resonated with me, my passions, and personal mission. I am a proud volunteer for Girl Develop It’s Boston Chapter and I try to engage with the communities locally to provide opportunities to get more girls and women exposed to technology and the diverse array of career opportunities within it. Outside of my markup language skills in HTML5 & CSS3, my technical skills consist of Python and JavaScript (and both of their varying frameworks).

Here’s what I’ve taken away from my most recent experience as a Python TA. …

WomenTechmakers members in Cambridge, MA were graced with the presence of brilliant, ambitious women in tech at Google Cambridge offices; here are notes I gathered from my experience celebrating International Women’s Day

Keynote Speaker >> Tali Sason

— Software Engineering Manager @ Google

The incredibly resilient talk that Tali gave IWD Summit attendees a great takeaway after sharing her stories about facing discrimination as the only woman in her Computer Engineering program in college:

Find success in everything that you do, at every level you find yourself at.

Creating and establishing balance in your life may be a necessity and you are the only one that draw that line to do so. No one else will.

The early morning small wins MATTER. It sets the pace and accomplished atmosphere for the rest of your day.

Find a support group locally. …

In 2016, I was mopping floors at a tanning salon in Houston, Texas. In 2017, I taught myself how to code and now I’m a Software Engineer in Boston’s media tech hub.

This may seem confusing and quite drastic upon initially skimming over the title, but there is a back story that provides context to a unique problem and an equally viable solution that sprouted in my life for the past year, looking back, and looking forward into 2020.

I am your typical and atypical nerd. I grew up playing video games everyday, reading sci-fi/fantasy books, illustrating, writing stories, composing music, playing horn instruments obnoxiously loud in the garage, and studying any subject I found and deemed intriguing and significant to the human experience. These were all of my intrinsic interests and no one could tell me I was passionate about “too many things”. That concept of limitation was not in my paradigm and so I was unfamiliar with the verbally passed down constraints of how to spend one’s (valuable) time. All of those activities were imperative to my existence and molded me into the ‘nerd’ that I am today and always will be. …

The last weeks at Resilient Coders’ bootcamp taught me so much about consistency, tenacity, and vulnerability in web development… I am officially part of the future of technology.

I graduated from the bootcamp. I’ve completed a major part of my web developer journey. But this is only the beginning.

Resilient Coders taught me that resilience goes beyond one’s need to remain focused with a tunnel-like vision on the goals and accomplishments that are dangling right before you, ready to be claimed. It’s also about how you will take the skills and accomplishments to create products and or services that inspire you, assist you, and make lives easier. At least, that’s how I cultivate technical skills and the acquisition of knowledge in academic and non-academic settings. That knowledge is then put on this track to be utilized for bettering oneself and other people.

Resilient Coders also taught me that people from all walks of life have a story — a story worth telling and hearing. People are incredibly brilliant in their own unique ways and to be in the midst of such distinctive intellect is rewarding in ways that are both unforeseeable and unanticipated. There is an organic beauty in that realization (and in the act of experiencing and actively appreciating such experiences). …