Tools That Support Software Development

Introduction

Yes, there are loads of different tools. Yes, everybody has their favorite. No, there's no reason to look down on people who use different tools than yours. Yes, people who like vi are weird. In this chapter, I'm not going to recommend specific tools, but maybe certain classes of tools and ways I've found of working with them that help me.

If you're new to programming – perhaps you've just taken a few classes or worked through some books – this chapter should tell you something about what programmers do beyond typing public static void into text editors. If you're more experienced, you may still find the odd useful nugget here.

Version Control/Source Code Management

I imagine many readers are currently thinking that the battle over version control must surely be over by now, and that all developers are using some system. This is, unfortunately, demonstrably untrue. Let me start...