How I Setup My Development Environment in 2023

Spoiler alert: this is a nerdy post!

There is a section in Microsoft Documentation that is really underestimated in my opinion. Is called “Set up your development environment on Windows” and can be found at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-environment/.

I think this is a gem and I encourage anyone (not only tech people) to check it out. It has two parts (Developer Tools and Developer Paths) and I think some of the recommendations from the first category can really help anyone in day-by-day tasks, not only developers.

First there is the Windows Terminal. This is a really modern host for all the possible shells out there. It supports auto-complete, themes, customized text, etc… If you use the command prompt, Powershell or bash you will love it because it brings them all together. Here is a nice video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT2L1SXFq9U&t=3s (or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6D_QFlcCI for a shorter version) - by Scott Hanselman.

As an example, here is a preview of my terminal:

Second, there is the Windows Subsystem for Linux. This brings you Linux in Windows to work with tools like kubernetes directly from your Windows machine. And it brings bash into your Windows Terminal. See some nice videos about it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuhzVDc0Slg (or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0eqZujVfYU for a shorter version) - also by Scott Hanselman.

Here is bash running under Ubuntu in my Windows:

Then there is Windows Package Manager  that brings you the power of installing any utility from your command line. Did you know you can search and install curl in Windows with just 2 lines?

And finally (but not the last available tool here) there are the Power Toys. As they describe it, this is "a set of utilities for power users to tune their Windows experience for greater productivity". There are a lot of tools here but I just want to mention two of them I use every day:

Mouse Utilities – helps you (among others) highlight you mouse cursor in a presentation:

Always on Top – helps you add a shortcut to quickly set/unset any window as Always on Top (useful in a presentation and not only).

I will not go into details, there are a lot of tools for which the name speaks by itself: Color Picker, Image Resizer, Fancy Zones, File Locksmith, File Explorer add-ons, Host File Editor, Screen Ruler and more, so I really encourage you to go and check them for yourself.

And not to forget, the good part is that all these tools are available for free through the Microsoft Store.

Happy coding!