Chapter 3: The Basic Tools
The authors compare a developers environment to the tools in a workshop. You should have a core set of tried and true tools that never fail; things you are intimately versed with that make up the basis of all your work. Any advanced tools (IDEs) should be sugar on top, but you should still have the knowledge necessary to utilize the basic tool set.
16. The Power of Plain Text
Tip 25: Keep Knowledge in Plain Text
Plain text is data stored in a format humans can read and interpret easily. Just because something is written with letters and numbers doesn’t necessarily mean it is plain text; it must be easy to interpret from the context given.
There are several structured plain text languages like HTML, JSON, YAML and so on. There are also protocols like HTTP, SMTP, and IMAP. Using plain text in these situations has several advantages
- Insurance against obsolescence
- If you don’t have to translate something, then it has more longevity
- You can parse the files without full knowledge of the format
- Human-readable information ensures that the data will outlive any project that created it
- Leverage
- Virtually anything in plain text can be placed into version control
- Easier Testing
- Using plain text to create synthetic data for tests makes it easier to add, update, or modify the test data without special tools