Dev tools resources for developers

GitHub's official command-line tool, `gh`, for pull requests, issues, repositories, releases and Actions runs from the terminal. It makes the everyday GitHub workflow faster, handles authentication for Git, and is easy to use in scripts.

• Dev tools
• DevOps

The quick-revision companion to the Programming foundations roadmap: language basics, collections, errors and files, a chapter of essentials for Python, JavaScript, Java, C++ or C#, the command line and Git, how computers run code, data structures and Big-O, clean design, testing and shipping projects. Use it to check what you half remember before a project, an exam or a technical conversation.

• Programming
• Web
• Dev tools
• CS fundamentals

GitHub's official guide to the profile README: a public repository named exactly after your username, containing a README.md, whose contents appear at the top of your GitHub profile. It explains setup, requirements and how to remove it. Use it to point recruiters and reviewers straight at your best projects instead of making them dig through every repository.

• Career
• Personal branding
• Dev tools

GitHub Copilot is GitHub's AI coding assistant. It completes code as you type, answers questions in chat, runs as an agent that edits files and runs commands in your editor, and can take on issues as a cloud coding agent that opens pull requests. It works inside VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode, Neovim and more. There is a free tier, and verified students get the Copilot Student plan at no cost.

• AI
• Dev tools

Cursor is an AI code editor built on VS Code, with agents that read your whole repository, plan changes across many files, run commands and review pull requests. It suits developers and students who want AI help inside their editor rather than a separate chat window. The free Hobby plan has limited agent use; serious daily use needs the $20 Pro plan or higher.

• AI
• Dev tools

Microsoft's free code editor, built on open source, and used by most developers for almost every language through its extension marketplace. It includes a debugger, Git integration, an integrated terminal and, more recently, AI agent features through GitHub Copilot with a free tier. Learn its debugger early instead of scattering print statements through your code.

• Dev tools

William Shotts' book on the Linux shell, free to download as a PDF under a Creative Commons licence and published in print by No Starch Press. It covers navigation, permissions, processes, package management, text processing, regular expressions and writing real shell scripts. It is the thorough reference to reach for when lecture notes and cheat sheets leave gaps, and suits beginners and self-taught developers alike.

• DevOps
• Dev tools

The official Git book by Scott Chacon and Ben Straub, free online and as PDF or EPUB, in many languages. It covers everyday use, branching, remotes, collaboration workflows and GitHub, then the internals that explain why Git behaves the way it does. Read the basics and branching chapters for daily work, then chapter ten on internals, and Git stops being frightening.

• Dev tools

A single page of Git recovery recipes by Katie Sylor-Miller, organised by the mistake you just made rather than by the command that fixes it. It is for anyone who uses Git daily and occasionally breaks something: committing to the wrong branch, needing to amend a commit, or losing work after a reset. A swear-free version and many translations exist.

• Dev tools

A free, community-written collection of short help pages for command line tools. Each page shows a handful of common, real examples instead of a full manual, so you can see how to extract an archive, find files or undo a git change in seconds. It covers common Linux, macOS, Windows and Android commands, and is available from a terminal client or in the browser.

• Dev tools

A GitHub repository that exists so you can make your first pull request safely: fork it, clone it, create a branch, add your name to a file, commit, push and open a pull request that gets merged. It suits anyone who has wanted to contribute to open source but never has, and it removes the fear of doing something visibly wrong in public, which is the real barrier. It takes about an hour.

• Dev tools

A part-by-part GitHub profile checklist for developers and CS students. It covers the profile basics, a profile README that earns its space, choosing and presenting pinned repositories, READMEs that let a stranger run your project, licences and repository hygiene, why contributions do or do not appear on your graph, keeping your email private, and securing the account.

• Career
• Dev tools

A practical guide to using Git well on a team, checked against the official Git documentation and the Pro Git book. It covers commits and messages, branches and pull requests, rebase vs merge, safe history rewriting, keeping secrets out, .gitignore, commit signing and how to recover from mistakes.

• Web
• Dev tools

An eight-stage plan for becoming at home in a Unix shell on Windows with WSL, on a Mac or on Linux: machine setup, shell basics, text tools, permissions and processes, Git, GitHub collaboration, Bash scripting with cron, and SSH, servers and debugging. It suits students and early-career engineers who can code a little but still avoid the terminal. By the end you can set up a machine from scratch, use Git and GitHub the way teams do, automate small jobs and look after a small Linux server over SSH.

• Dev tools
• DevOps

A six-stage path for complete beginners and self-taught developers with gaps: one language learnt properly (Python, JavaScript, Java, C++ or C#), the terminal and Git, how computers run code, data structures and Big-O, object-oriented design with tests, and shipping real projects. By the end you can write, test and publish small programs a team could trust, and explain what your code costs and why it is organised as it is.

• Programming
• Web
• Dev tools
• CS fundamentals

The complete Vim user manual and reference, the same text as :help inside Vim, as a searchable, hyperlinked website kept in sync with the Vim source. The quick reference and the first user manual chapters are the best free way to learn Vim properly.

• Dev tools

A free, open-source reference that explains every piece of Markdown syntax with side-by-side examples, and shows which apps support which extensions. The fastest way to settle how a table, a nested list or a footnote should be written.

• Dev tools

A free, hands-on GitHub Skills exercise that takes under an hour: in a ready-made Codespace you use GitHub Copilot to explain, write, plan and develop code on a small website, then use it to summarise and review a pull request. A practical first session with Copilot, no local install needed.

• AI
• Dev tools

GitHub's official documentation for Copilot: plans and free access, inline suggestions and chat in each editor, custom instructions, content exclusion, the Copilot CLI, code review and the cloud agent that turns issues into pull requests. The place to check what your plan includes and how each surface works today.

• AI
• Dev tools

GitHub's official page on how Markdown renders in READMEs, issues, pull requests and comments, including GitHub-only features such as alerts, task lists, footnotes, mentions, section links and relative links. The source of truth when something looks different on GitHub.

• Dev tools

The official docs for DVC (Data Version Control), the open source tool that versions large datasets and model files next to Git and turns training steps into reproducible pipelines. It is the simplest way to answer "which data trained this model?" and to rebuild any past model with one command.

• AI
• Machine learning
• DevOps
• Dev tools

Cursor's official docs and help centre: installing the editor, Tab, inline edit, the Agent and its Plan, Ask and Debug modes, project rules in .cursor/rules, ignore files, Run Modes, checkpoints, MCP, Bugbot and the Cursor CLI. Free, current and far more reliable than year-old tutorials for a tool that changes every few weeks.

• AI
• Dev tools

A reference for contributing to open source in six chapters: how projects are run, Git and GitHub for contributors, your first merged pull request, becoming a regular, mentored programmes and maintaining your own project. Its 51 concepts each explain what a term means and why it matters, with the exact Git commands for forking, syncing, rebasing and force-pushing safely. Use it alongside the Sefism Open Source roadmap to revise each stage and keep open while you work on a real pull request.

• Career
• Dev tools

A tiny, widely used standard for writing code review comments with a label (praise, nitpick, suggestion, issue, question and so on) and optional decorations such as blocking or non-blocking. It makes your reviews clearer and kinder, and helps you read other people's comments without taking them personally.

• Programming
• Dev tools