Atom

After 20 years, I decided to brush up on HTML and try to finally pick up CSS. To make things more exciting than they needed to be, I determined that I would also learn to use Git and Linux at that same time. This is how I discovered the code editor I eventually installed on my Mac because the Linux box was underpowered and kept crashing: Atom.

After an extended viewing of LinkedIn Learning’s “Git Essential Training: The Basics” and much note-taking, I resolved to use Git and GitHub for version control of my nascent project. I installed and configured Git on both the Linux box and the Mac at the same time—in Terminal using the command line. When I finally opened Atom, I was thrilled to see the graphical user interface panels for both Git and GitHub. (The command line has a steep learning curve, which I am still ascending.)

Even aside from its incorporation of Git and GitHub, Atom is a great tool. Once you’ve saved a file as .html, Atom very conveniently autocompletes HTML tags as you type them in, offering up closing tags and attributes, generally making HTML much easier to use than when typing the markup into a plain text editor. But its Git and GitHub integration has actually made version control convenient.

Once you make changes and then save the file you’re working on, it automatically appears in the Git panel, waiting to be staged. Once staged, it moves down to the middle window in the panel, ready to be committed. Below that is an area where you enter the commit message. Enter the message and click on Commit to <branch>. Once that is done, simply click on the Push icon on the status bar, and your file version is safely tucked away.

This new web odyssey has led to a gem of a text editor that’s enabling this neophyte to use the power of Git and GitHub to organize and manage an admittedly tiny repository of HTML and CSS. But the extra effort of setting up these tools initially has saved me from the usual versioning nightmare.

Disclaimer: I did not research and compare other tools. This post is an evaluation of what I stumbled upon in a blind search for things that suited my needs at a time of coincidental initial exploration of Fedora Linux and a weird compulsion to learn about Git and GitHub.

• 2022 10