In general, I believe most Developers always tend to look for using Free or Open Source Tools.
And the fact is, thanks to the amazing community of Open Source Developers, you can have all the essential development tools for free!
A personal fact, and maybe it´s something that comes with the age or experience, and by getting a better understanding of how valuable development time is, I am realizing that I am more open than ever to pay a fair price for top quality software, sponsoring other Devs, etc.
So I decided to write this article, to open the discussion: What paid software do you use on a daily basis that you can´t live without?
It doesn't need to be a Software per se, can be some site template you bought, for example. Some resource or tool that you gladly paid for it, that makes your life as Dev much easier.
I can start naming a few:
Jetbrains IDEs
While there are awesome Open Source Code Editors like VS Code, JetBrains IDEs are very popular and powerful.
Some of the features I highlight are the powerful refactoring tools and much more reliable and faster code completion.
I use a mix of VS Code and Jetbrains IDEs (Goland, PHPStorm, WebStorm) but for more "serious" and complex projects, I tend to prefer Jetbrains IDEs.
VSCode is closing the gap and has many more contributions in terms of Extensions and I would love to use it fully, but there are some tasks that Jetbrains is still far superior.
It´s definitely a very powerful software that you might be willing to pay for.
Cacher
Cacher is a Code Snippets management tool that helps to organize your snippets library with labels and a powerful search engine and everything is Synced to GitHub Gist.
It´s cross-platform and also provides deep integration with the most popular Editors like VS Code, Jetbrains, Atom, and Sublime.
I couldn´t find anything free with this level of quality and features.
With the usage I am giving to, the personal plan of 6$/month is completely worth it.
Tailwind UI
TailwindUI is not an application but I think it deserves a mention here.
It is a blessing for backend developers like me who suck at design.
It provides a high-quality set of all kinds of components for building any kind of Web UI, from an application to marketing and landing pages.
The components are pure HTML with Tailwind CSS.
You can see what is included here
The price range from $149 to 249$ one-time payment.
It can look expensive but believe me, it´s an amazing toolkit for building good looking websites and you can see the amount of work put on it.
If you want to build a web application but suck at design, it´s a great investment.
Now, I want to hear from you!
And also start streaming your micro-payments. Let´s see how this Web Monetization thingy really works. 😛
Latest comments (36)
All great tools I use a lot
Here are mine:
I'd definitely echo the suggestion for Affinity!
I only recently picked up Affinity Designer (on sale!) and it's been brilliant for a bunch of different things: rough designs, easier icon/svg editing, mockups for different form factors, all sorts of things.
I use quite a few paid tools & services ...
Notion,
Todoist,
Sizzy App,
Freshbooks,
Zapier,
Affinity Suite (Designer, Photo, Publisher),
Backblaze,
Loom,
Content Snare,
DigitalOcean,
WPMU,
Tunnelbear
Basically Jetbrains tools.
I as well am a huge fan of Rider, IntelliJ, GoLand, etc. Also, though, I have been a big fan of GitKraken because of it's built-in tools for handling merging and things of that nature.
I'm not spreading misinformation. I'm saying that separation of concerns is still important, and that things like Tailwind - which is only what we're talking about because it's the flavour of the month - are making the web worse for everyone.
I have. I read it the last time someone objected to my point. However, it says nothing to convince me it's a good idea. It has a section on "extracting classes", which I've ceded before as being an ok way to work, even if nothing novel - but that's not how people are using it. Including Tailwind themselves.
The only tool I paid for is Codespace, a snippet manager. Else, I use free tools like VSCode, Sublime Merge, Insomnia
Didn't know Codespace. It looks nice.
Here's mine:
PHPStorm: If VSCode was around back when I was choosing my IDE I'd probably used it as it seems like a great free alternative. But now that I've used PHPStorm it feels like there is no turning back.
LambdaTest. If you build websites you need a way to test various configurations. It was that or BrowserStack, so I went with LamdbaTest, which was more affordable.
Office 365 subscription. The entire MS Office suite at its latest version, along with 1TB of OneDrive is definitely worth it.
Affinity Design / Affinity Photo. I'm not a Designer, but from time to time I have to deal with Illustrator and Photoshop files, so Affinity offers an affordable, quality alternative to Adobe's products.
Dashlane. A good password manager is an essential tool no matter what you do.
ACF Pro. I work with WordPress, so ACF Pro was easily the most valuable WordPress-related purchase that I've made over the years. Along with that, I'd include a few other premium WordPress plugins: WPML, WP-All-Import, Gravity Forms, WP-Rocket.
Newton Mail. This one is tricky. It's far from perfect and it had a lot of issues over the years. I can't stand Outlook, though and the way that it works with Gmail and GSuite accounts, and I like a mobile app's conveniences on my Desktop's mail client, and Newton was the best solution that I could find on Windows. I am more than willing to switch, though, if I find a better alternative.
I've never paid for any tools! In fact, I didn't realize that there were any you paid for except for fancy themes for websites or VS Code...
Came here to say Jetbrains IDEs (specifically webstorm, being mostly a frontend/JS dev). I'm always changing file and variable names, so its refactoring tool alone is worth the price.
I also pair it with Deep TabNine as my machine learning autocompletion
Take a look at Boostnote !
Basically all of the jetbrains IDE's. I use pretty much all of them.
Other things I happen to pay for because I use em' a lot:
There's some others but those are some of the big $ items I shell out my own cash for.
There are also tons of stuff that I often request from employers.
Same here, I pay for PHPStorm.
And as I can never make a proper merge on the command line, I also paid for a SmartGit license.
All the other tools, I have them thanks to the OpenSource developers around the world 🙂
Bruno! You nailed it on JetBrains ...I use both JetBrain's PHPStorm and WebStorm and they're wonderful! The VSCode fanatics gonna love JetBrains products once they try them. At the moment am using them for free through Github Developer Pack...but will definitely buy the license once my free student plan is over. And by the way...WebStorm is a subset of PHPStorm...Everything in WebStorm is inside PHPStorm!
Actually all the jetbrains products are """forks""" of intellij IDEA
It's not a fork. Jetbrains IDEs are using Intellij platform same as Android Studio.
Webstorm, Afiniti products too.