Technically speaking as a web developer you could cobble together the CSS, HTML or JavaScript that you require with nothing more than a basic text editor. However with the help of Integrated Development Environments (IDE) you could gain a range of tools that will let you write, test, and develop your code that much faster.
Although many of the top IDEs out there tend to require a purchase or subscription, there are several great free options that you should really try out:
Atomby GitHub
Simple, modern, and fully customizable – Atom is an excellent text editor with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Node.js integration. It benefits from having a huge community of users that code packages that can extend its features further, and the fact that it is designed to work with GitHub will definitely appeal to many web developers.
Brackets
Another nice, modern and extremely customizable IDE by none other than Adobe is Brackets. It features support for HTML, CSS and JavaScript alongside several features such as its ‘Live Preview’ that lets you see changes take place as you type them out. Because of its large community, it too benefits from having numerous extensions that you can include to customize it further.
Komodo Edit
As far as IDEs go, the Komodo IDE is one of the more popular paid IDEs and Komodo Edit is essentially the free version of it. While considerably lighter than the full-fledged IDE, Komodo Edit is still a useful and comes with the customary autocomplete, syntax checker, and project management features. It too has extensions that will let you customize it as you see fit.
Visual Studio Code
Yet another popular IDE, Visual Studio Code is lightweight yet extremely powerful and has extensions that add a variety of other features. Its main advantage however is its ‘IntelliSense’ system that is a more robust and powerful type of autocomplete which provides contextual suggestions and completions based on the code itself.
NetBeans
As the official IDE for Java 8, NetBeans is designed to let developers quickly code in Java, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript while also catering to PHP and C or C++ developers. It comes equipped with the standard features that you’d expect such as autocomplete, project management, and has a nifty debugger too. Within its community it is easy to find plugins that fill any gaps you require.
Alongside a solid IDE, you should also take advantage of load testing tools that can test how your application will perform and expose any issues before it goes live. Some are extremely easy to use such as LoadComplete, LoadStorm, and others that you’ll find in this list.
Any one of the IDEs listed above should suit your needs as a web developer, and choosing between them will largely be a question of preference. Seeing as they are free however, you’ll have the luxury of trying them out for yourself to see which is the best fit and helps boost your productivity the most.
