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Development Tools

Posted by Casey Courtney
Casey Courtney
2,678 Points

Workspaces vs text editor

Just wondering if more experienced students use the Workspaces editor to follow along with lessons or separate software like Sublime or Atom. I noticed some of the videos teach a few things about Workspaces, which seems odd to me since we would not use Workspaces in a job setting.

I completed my first course using my linux environment with Sublime. Am I missing out on anything by not using Workspaces?

2 Answers

Luke Pettway
Luke Pettway
16,593 Points

It's really up to you to choose what works best for you, but I definitely opt for using Sublime when I work on stuff here. There are a lot of features I use such as Emmet which allow me to work much faster than if I had to do everything in workspaces.

Casey Courtney
Casey Courtney
2,678 Points

Emmet looks really neat, Luke. Do you think a beginner like me should wait to use something like Emmet in order to get used to typing out more code and develop the muscle memory?

Luke Pettway
Luke Pettway
16,593 Points

Emmet simply saves you from having to type out things over and over, so for example if you want an unordered list with 20 list items:

ul > li * 20

I don't see why this would be bad to learn, you still have to have a good understanding of html structure and attributes to use it. I still end up typing a lot out, but will use Emmett for long form things where I would simply be using the duplicate functionality built into Sublime.

Ryan Zimmerman
Ryan Zimmerman
3,854 Points
Ryan Zimmerman
Ryan Zimmerman
3,854 Points

Casey,

I am probably just a few weeks / months ahead of you. I started out using workspace because I wanted to focus on fundamentals but as I have started to step out of treehouse when something really interests me such as node I have begun to rely more and more on sublime because I am thinking more about app structure, dev fundamentals and I am developing a comfort with packages.