The Programming Tool I Wish I’d Found Quicker
When I first started doing any programming, I was a sales professional trying to prove a feature wouldn’t be too hard to add. I don’t even remember what the feature was but I do remember how quickly I realized my error.
Not wanting to fail, I decided I would build something, even if it was much simpler than the original idea. However, there were two pretty immediate setbacks.
- I didn’t realize it was normal to Google a lot of questions so I tried avoiding what I thought was “cheating” which slowed things way down— pro-tip: learn to Google well before trying to learn to code and your journey will be smoother.
- For someone new to programming and (at the time) no plans to do much with programming, other than to prove a point, the local environment setup seemed a daunting barrier.
It’s the second setback I want to focus on today. The tools I ended up finding would not only have been immensely helpful in the beginning but have continued to be immensely helpful as I learn new things.
This brings me to Repl.it.
If you’re new to programming or even just considering playing around with programming, I strongly encourage you to create an account. Using the Repl.it platform, you can quickly and easily set up environments, in (likely) whatever language you want, as you practice your loops and conditional statements and foundations to every programming language you encounter.
If you’ve been programming for a while, you probably have a local environment setup and might wonder why these tools still have value if they’re not your primary tool. You’ve also probably learned that programming is a constantly changing field and there’s always something new to learn. The same benefits of quick setup for a wide variety of languages and libraries are a great way of trying new ways of doing things and explore whether different stacks are worth investing a larger amount of time or resources into.
Maybe Repl.it isn’t the right fit for you. There are other online IDEs out there to try. The main points to remember are that Google is your friend and, since we all need practice when it comes to programming, use the tools that help get you practicing and growing comfortable with new things quickly!
