There are a lot of tools that programmers use everyday – many of them known only to other professionals in the same field. Since I have been a programmer for a long while now, I have lots of experience with using different tools and lots of people ask me what my favorite tools are. So here is a brief list that covers both general programming and web-related things. And if you think any important tool is missing, do not hesitate to share with your comments!
Programmers use a number of tools to create applications for different platforms. The choice of tools depends on the development language and type of application being created. But there are a handful of tools which appear commonly in most developer toolkits. These developer tools aren’t only used in coding applications but also in working with APIs and other tasks that require testing, debugging and tweaking applications even after they have been deployed.
Rainy Mood
If you work in an open office, but find any kind of music distracting to listen to via your headphones, you can try a simple noise generator. Rainy Mood is a straightforward choice, one that offers the soothing sound of falling rain.
This noise generator will provide you with endless sound of rain and thunder, that’ll help you focus, and prevent the office chatter from distracting you. The website also offers a different musician every day you can listen to along with the falling rain, but you can ignore this option.
You can listen to it directly on the website, or try it on Android or iOs devices, which offer additional features. The phone app offers 4 rain scenes you can choose from: Countryside, Ocean, Café, and Classic scene.
Git
Git is a version control system meant to track changes in computer files, and it’s mainly used in source code management.
Each member of the developer team gets a local copy of the development history, and the system documents and copies all changes across repositories. It operates locally, and one of its main draws is its speed.
The Git feature that stands out the most is its branching model; you can use multiple branches for your ideas, test them, and easily backtrack if they don’t work.
You can use it on Windows, Linux, and Mac.
In addition, you can make use of the Git community, which is a rich resource of ideas, concepts, and useful patches.
CodeStream: Developer collaboration platform
CodeStream is a free open-source extension for VS Code, Visual Studio, and JetBrains. It supercharges development workflows by putting collaboration tools in your IDE. It supports pull requests from GitHub, BitBucket and GitLab, issue management from Jira, Trello, Asana and 9 others, and provides code discussion that ties it all together, integrated with Slack, MS Teams, email, and in-editor notifications.
Development teams can easily handle brainstorming sessions by selecting a single line of code and commenting their queries or ideas. All the conversations that have taken place throughout the development process are automatically included in the final documentation of the product. With Multiple IDE support, developers can communicate across the complete team’s IDEs. And by working across branches, conversations and code references can be kept accurate. Other advanced features are automatic git-blame and at-mentions while typing questions, one-click navigation to the code editor and more.
Features:
- Version Control
- Collaboration
- Chat (Messaging)
Pricing:
- Free
Github Copilot: Your AI Pair Programmer
GitHub Copilot is one of the best productivity tools for programmers. It is an artificial intelligence tool developed by GitHub and OpenAI to assist users of Visual Studio Code by autocompleting code. It works wherever Visual Studio Code works — on your machine or in the cloud on GitHub Codespaces. And it’s fast enough to use as you type. GitHub Copilot works with a broad set of frameworks and languages. The technical preview does especially well for Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, and Go, but it understands dozens of languages and can help you find your way around almost anything.
With GitHub Copilot, you’re always in charge. You can cycle through alternative suggestions, choose which to accept or reject, and manually edit suggested code. GitHub Copilot adapts to the edits you make, matching your coding style.
Pricing:
- Free
Embold
Embold – Fixing bugs before deployment saves a lot of time and energy in the long run. Embold is a software analytics platform that analyses source code and uncovers issues that impact stability, robustness, security, and maintainability.
Advantages:
- With the Embold plugins, you can pick up code smells and vulnerabilities as you code, before making commits.
- Unique anti-pattern detection prevents the compounding of unmaintainable code.
- Integrate seamlessly with Github, Bitbucket, Azure, and Git and plugins available for Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA.
- Get deeper and faster checks than standard code editors, for over 10 languages.
GeneXus
Tagline: Software that makes software
GeneXus offers an intelligent platform for developing applications and systems that enable the automatic creation, development, and maintenance of programs, databases, and mission-critical applications in multiple languages and on different platforms.
All applications modeled with GeneXus can be easily adapted to changes in businesses, as well as generated in the newest programming languages and automatically deployed to any major platform in the market.
The vision behind GeneXus is based on over three decades of experience in the creation of automatic generation and development tools for applications.
Key Features:
- AI-based automatic software generation.
- Multi-Experience apps. Model once, generate for multiple platforms (responsive and progressive web apps, mobile native and hybrid apps, Apple Tv, chatbots & virtual assistants)
- Highest flexibility. Largest number of databases supported in the market. Interoperability capabilities for system integrations.
- Future-proof: Evolve systems over long periods of time and change between technologies and platforms automatically.
- Business Process Management Support. Digital Process Automation through integrated BPM modeling.
- Deployment flexibility. Deploy apps on-premises, in the cloud or in hybrid scenarios.
- Application security module included.
- No runtime for generated applications or price by developer seat.
Verdict: With over 30 years of success in the market, Generius provides a unique platform that captures the needs of users and generates applications for present and future technologies, without the need of learning each new technology. It allows pragmatic developers to evolve quickly, responding to market and technological changes in an agile way.
Conclusion
Programmers use a wide variety of tools in order to complete their tasks. To be a successful programmer, you need to understand how to use and write code for all the different kinds of tools that will support your endeavors. It’s not just about writing perfect code, but also knowing how to use the best tools.