recommended-development-tools.md

+### Recommended development tools/aliases
+
+_(Note: these instructions assume an Ubuntu variant - they may need to be modified for other systems.)_
+
+- __[Virtualenv][virtualenv] and [Virtualenvwrapper][virtualenvwrapper]__
+
+    These two packages are _essential_ tools for local Python environment isolation (especially if you aren't using docker yet); check out their doc pages for more details.
+
+    __Installation__:
+
+    ```bash
+    sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper
+    echo 'WORKON_HOME="$HOME/.virtualenvs"' >> ~/.bash_aliases
+    echo 'PROJECT_HOME="$HOME/projects"' >> ~/.bash_aliases  # replace 'projects' with your preferred development path
+    echo 'source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh' >> ~/.bash_aliases
+    source ~/.bashrc
+    ```
+    
+    __Aliases__:
+    
+    The virtualenvwrapper project comes with two commands, `mkvirtualenv` and `mkproject`, which will use your python2 interpreter by default. Here are some handy aliases to use the python3 interpreter when desired:
+
+    ```bash
+    echo 'alias mkvirtualenv3="mkvirtualenv --python=`which python3`"' >> ~/.bash_aliases
+    echo 'alias mkproject3="mkproject --python=`which python3`"' >> ~/.bash_aliases
+    source ~/.bashrc
+    ```
+    
+    Now you can simply type `mkproject3 foo` to create a new project that uses your python3 interpreter by default.
+
+
+[virtualenv]: https://virtualenv.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
+[virtualenvwrapper]: https://virtualenvwrapper.readthedocs.org/en/latest/