Margaux Flores: How WebStorm Lived Up to Its Tagline
When you ask someone about why they switched to WebStorm, the most common answer you’d expect to hear is, “someone told me about it, I liked it, and then I started using it”. We spoke with Margaux Flores who shared her journey in the frontend development world and told us how she became a WebStorm user to try to challenge the tagline on our website, “The smartest JavaScript IDE”.
Hi Margaux! Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I’m a frontend developer in a tech company. My background is pretty wild as I have worked in public service and marketing. Those jobs were nice, but I’ve always been passionate about programming, web design, and web development. I didn’t study any of that in school, so I wasn’t confident that I could actually do it as a job. Eventually, I started working as a freelance web designer and became a frontend developer. I’m so glad I found the confidence to make that kind of career switch.
That is a diverse background. What did you study at university?
I studied computer engineering. It was more infrastructure-focused rather than programming and software, which I later realized I had more interest in.
What projects are you working on at the moment and what is your current technology stack?
I’m working on my company’s very first transaction-processing product and we’re slowly building up the UI dashboard for that. I’m actively using Vue and everything else that comes behind it like Node.js, webpack, and TypeScript.
Do you remember how you started using WebStorm?
I was introduced to WebStorm by one of my developer friends. I‘d never heard of it before, so I got curious and went through the WebStorm webpage. The tagline said “The smartest JavaScript IDE”. I had my doubts about that and I was like, “All right, let me see if you’re telling the truth. That sounds like a marketing gimmick”. So I took it as a challenge and downloaded the trial version. Fortunately, WebStorm quickly dispelled my doubts and actually lived up to that tagline.
How did WebStorm live up to its tagline?
The best thing about WebStorm is that it just works out of the box. Previously I used VS Code, and it took me quite a while to actually get to the point where I was able to install all the plugins I needed and configure it so it would suit my needs as a frontend developer. With WebStorm, I haven’t really changed much in the configuration, yet it has always delivered what I needed.
Also thanks to WebStorm, I don’t feel so alone, even though I’m the only frontend developer at my company. It feels like a teammate to me because it has all the intelligence to support me.
Is there anything in this intelligence that you find especially helpful?
I really like the support WebStorm has for TypeScript. TypeScript can be a little complicated, especially once your application grows. At some point, you just can’t remember all the types you have defined. And with WebStorm you don’t actually have to as it lets you go to the declaration or usages. You can also see the type on mouseover. This and other related WebStorm features made me fall more in love with TypeScript.
I also like the little hints the IDE gives me here and there. For example, if I’m working with a promise, the IDE has various features that let me know that this is a promise. It was overwhelming at first, but as I got used to WebStorm, it became super-useful and made my code more readable. I don’t have to remember what any piece of code is for – WebStorm explains it to me.
Last, do you have a favorite WebStorm shortcut?
Shift+Shift. It speeds up my work process as I can just go through the settings and features and quickly find what I need.
We’d like to thank Margaux for taking part in this Q&A.
If you use WebStorm and feel like sharing your experience with us, please let us know by leaving a comment below or contacting us.
The WebStorm team
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