My reading journal for Code Fellows.
Basic text editors like notepad are the most basic option available with little to no extra features. They operate in plain text format with no option for any other formatting or anything fancy. While they work just fine and can be used, they lack a lot of features and extensions that more advanced text editors can provide to make your life much easier.
Advanced text editors like Visual Studio Code or Atom have many different extensions as well as some core features that are very important to your quality of life and ease of use. Two of the biggest features are Code Completion and Syntax Highlighting. Code Completion suggests possible completions to the command you are typing. This saves you time by giving you a shortcut to finish the command while also reducing the risk of mistyping something. Some editors will even automatically close tags and brackets when you open them, which saves more time and also helps you to keep your work organized.
While a text editor does pretty much what the name suggests, an IDE is a whole software suite where a text editor is just a single part of it. An IDE additionally acts as a file manager, compiler, and debugger. While you don’t need all of these tools when starting out, they can become quite useful once you move onto more advanced coding.
There are many different applications that you can use to write your code and while some of them have very helpful features, in the end the best thing to use is what feels good and works for you. If you think it’s the best text editor, then it is at the very least the best text editor for you.
echo -Displays which shell you are using (most commonly bash).
pwd -Print Working Directory displays the directory you are currently in.
ls -List command shows a list of the files and directories contained in the specified directory. Can be used with variables, most commonly -l for a long listing.
cd -Change Directory allows you to move up and down through the directory tree or go directly to a certain location if you use the absolute path.
Remember that Linux is case sensitive.
Be careful with spaces in file names. Use quotes or escape characters to circumvent the issue.
Some files and directories are hidden and require you to use ls -a for all to display them.
Be mindful of the difference between Relative and Absolute paths. Both can be used but you need to be aware of which you are working with to use the proper commands.
You can use the arrow keys to navigate up and down between previous entries and tab can be used to auto complete a path or command.