Original post written Jan 24th 2017

Everybody has their own way of working digitally, here’s mine. I will update this post as things change over the course of the next 2 years.

Wireframing

Pencil and paper.

I don’t use wireframing tools or rapid prototyping tools such as Balsamiq, I find that by starting out on paper I can involve other people in the process and get their input. At the very least they will gain an understanding of the way I work and what wireframing means by doing it with me. I have found it useful in the past to wireframe with clients at the very early stages of a project - sometime in the first meeting.

High Fidelty Visuals

Illustrator (Inkscape).

Illustrator is a vector art program. This means that if you design, for example, an app landing page, and the client wants it to be projected onto the side of the Shard, you know it can be done with no loss of quality. In my opinion, Photoshop should be used for editing photographic images, not for designing applications. Inkscape is a viable open source alternative.

Operating System

Linux Ubuntu

I am now working full time with the Linux OS using Ubuntu, running Windows under VirtualBox to gain access to Adobe creative programs.

Previously

Windows: Admittedly I only use this because of my need for Adobe programs. I intend to switch my working environment over to Linux for all course related work. My console of choice on Windows is Babun.

Text Editing

Gedit

I am now using the inbuilt text editor for Ubuntu which is the super fast Gedit. I did try my hand at Notepad++ for Linux but there are a couple of bugs which really slow my progress down.

Previously

Notepad++ : Super simple yet super powerful. I use it for all my html / css editing and any Jekyll powered sites. I hope I can use this course to springboard my attempts to learn Vim alongside programming.

IDE

Pycharm Community Edition

The free version of Pycharm is my first experience of running an IDE and it seems very intuitive and fast. However, I do still need to spend time fully understanding file structures and where I should be saving things.

Previously

None: I have used Microsoft Visual Studio in the past when helping development teams out, however currently all my editing is done in Notepad++. I have installed PyCharm in anticipation of beginning Python programming.

FTP

Filezilla

I am yet to try Cyberduck in this space.

Version Control

GitHub

I am now fully set up with GitHub, though I do need to increase the regularity with which I use the service.

Previously

None: In the past I have only used TortoiseSVN however I will be using Github from now on in line with course recommendations.