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Soumya Roy
Soumya Roy

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11 Top Open-Source Tools for Web and Android Developers in 2019

open source tools for web and android developers

According to several studies, there are about 18.2 million software developers worldwide and that is expected to rise up to 26.4 million by 2019 end, with a 45% increase. So there is no doubt that web and Android development is one of the most popular jobs in the world today.

To become an expert developer in this cut-throat competition you need to master the programming, development process, and take full advantage of the best tools out there. In fact, learning how to use these tools is the first crucial step you have to take in your web and Android development journey.

If you are a beginner or pro developer in the Android and web development space you need a rich source of the best open-source toolkit in your development workflow to build better and dynamic websites as well as Android applications.

So without any more preamble let’s have a look at 2019’s 11 top web and Android development tools that are open-source and will grow your development efficiency exponentially.

AngularJS

AngularJS is an open-source free JavaScript framework to build dynamic front-end web applications. Due to its powerful features, it has become one of the favorite tools among web developers worldwide. AngularJS was developed by Google and it is mostly used for building single page web applications.

It allows you to use HTML as your template language and you can extend the HTML syntax to express your web application components more precisely. Its data binding and dependency injection system eliminate most of the code writing part and you can access all the features from your browser.

Features:
MVC Framework - This framework is based on the concept of Model View Control (MVC) architecture and it helps you build the client-side web applications. You do not need to write extra code to fit all the elements together. It allows you to create all the MVC elements separately and it automatically combines them by using AngularJS Framework.

Data Binding - You don’t have to write special code to bind data; it automatically synchronizes data between model and view components.

Less coding - You don’t need to write a different set of code for different devices for running the application. A single code will do the work for you and that can be used for various platforms.

Unit testing - The code is divided into smaller units and that helps you to easily detect any mistakes in each line of the code. It has an in-built dependency injection system through which mock units are injected and tested to see whether the output is producing expected data or not.

Node.js

Node.js is an open-source and free JavaScript for developing server-side applications. Node.js is built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine to build scalable network applications. It uses event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight as well as efficient.

Most of the basic modules of Node.js are written in javascript and it also provides a rich library of various javascript modules that simplifies the web application development process.

Features:
Fast execution - As Node.js is built on Chrome's V8 javascript engine its library works very fast in executing different codes.

Highly scalable - Its event mechanism helps the server to respond in a non-blocking way that makes it highly scalable.

Asynchronous and Event-driven - Node.js library involves asynchronous APIs that means the server never waits for an API to return data, instead it moves to the next API after calling it. Its notification mechanism of events helps the server to receive a response from the previous API call.

No Buffering - Node.js applications never buffer any data, as it speeds up the whole process by giving output data in smaller chunks.

Single threaded - Node.js applications use a single-threaded model with event looping.

Android Studio

Android Studio is another open-source tool that contains all the features you need to build an Android app. This tool is also known as the official integrated development environment (IDE) for Google’s Android operating system. It contains features like APK analyzer, fast simulator, flexible build system, visual layout, and intelligent code editor etc. to provide you a smooth application development environment.

It has come up with the latest Android studio 3.2 version that is more stable and makes it the best for Android developers to build new android app bundles.

Features:
Intelligent code editor - It offers advanced code completion feature that allows you to write better codes and improve your productivity. When you type your code it provides suggestions in a dropdown list and you can simply select the one that is needed.

Run apps instantly - Its instant run feature understands the changes you make in your code and delivers them without restarting or rebuilding your app that helps you to see the effects immediately.

Testing apps - It helps you to test your Android apps with JUnit 4 and functional UI test frameworks.

All Android device optimization - It lets you build apps for Android phones, Android wearable, tablets, Android TV, and Android Auto.

Bootstrap

Bootstrap is another free, front-end focused framework that is used for developing websites and applications. The websites and applications developed using Bootstrap are compatible with both iOS and Android devices.

Bootstrap is an HTML, CSS and Javascript based framework that lets you create dynamic websites. It comes with an in-built code that provides a solution for most of the tricky elements such as responsiveness that often slows down web projects.

Features:
Easy to start - Bootstrap is very simple to begin and get started and that is one of its most appealing features.

LESS and CSS files - Bootstrap offers both LESS as well as CSS files.

Easy customization - Bootstrap is designed on responsive 12 column grids, layouts, and components that make it easy to customize.

Templates - The collection of templates makes things easier for beginners to create a website following simple tutorials available on Bootstrap.

Extensive components - Bootstrap comes with components like dropdowns, button, navigation bar, breadcrumbs, alerts, progress bar and many more.

Brackets

Brackets is an open-source text editor tool that helps you to build website and applications directly from your browser. It is specially designed for web designers and front-end developers.

Brackets is built with HTML, CSS, and Javascript and it currently runs as a desktop application that can access your local files. Brackets tool is available for download in Mac, Windows, and Linux operating system.

Features:
Highlight syntax - You can highlight specific code to denote them with a different color, font or background.

Find and replace code - It helps you to find a specific line of code and replace them with new command without scrolling through the whole code that saves a lot of your time.

Cross-platform support - You can access your data for various device types and operating systems.

Language support - It supports various programming languages such as c, Java or Python and at the same time, it supports front-end languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Instabug

Instabug is an essential tool for every developer to build error-free android apps. You can share screenshots, audio-video recordings, detailed error logs to identify and fix the bugs easily.

Popular Android apps like Paypal, Yahoo, Buzzfeed, Dubsmash, Scribd and many others use Instabug to check vulnerability issues.

Features:
Bug and crash reports - Receive detailed bug and crash reports, and track every step before a bug or crash to reproduce the crash and network request logs.

Improve user communication - Your users can easily report bugs and submit their feedback. After fixing the issue you can reply back to them through the app. This makes a huge impact on retention and engagement rate of your users.

Integrate with tools - You can integrate Instabug with tools like Jira, GitHub, Slack, Trello and more directly from your dashboard.

LeakCanary

LeakCanary is a powerful open-source memory leak detection tool developed by Square. It attempts to find out any memory leaks within your applications and provides a leak trace system to help you identify and eliminate those leaks.

Features:
It automatically displays leak information whenever any memory leak occurs, that enables developers to address the issues immediately and fix them as early as possible.

Once you set up LeakCanary it automatically sends you a notification when memory leaks happen in your application with a complete tracking option to help you fix the problem.

LeakCanary highlights the possible causes of the leak with a red underline wave that helps you find which reference is causing the leak.

LeakCanary should be used in debug builds and it should be disabled in release builds.

Bower

Bower is another popular open-source web development tool built by Twitter that helps you manage various web components such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, frameworks, fonts, libraries, assets and many other elements.

Features:
Bower helps you fetch and install right version packages, update, and manage all front-end development dependencies.

You can track all your packages and make sure that they are updated or set to some specific version for programming.

Bower fetches and installs packages from all over, taking care of hunting, finding, downloading, and saving the data you need.

It is generally optimized for front-end developers. If multiple packages depend on a single package, for example, jQuery then Bower will download jQuery only once. This phenomenon is known as flat dependency graph and it helps to reduce page load.

GitHub

GitHub is a web development platform where programmers and developers work together to review code, manage projects, and build software. This open-source platform hosts plenty of projects and codes of multiple programming languages.

Github simplifies the whole documentation process and as a developer, you can host your documentation directly from repositories. Github is available as a desktop application for both Windows and Mac that allows you to integrate it into your workflow comfortably.

Features:
Drag & drop Gist code - Github’s Gist allows you to host code snippets. Using Gist you can add codes directly from files. You just need to drag and drop the files on the Gist and the codes present in the file will be copied immediately.

Create folder via the web interface - It allows you to manage repositories through its web interface and that is how you can create new files or folders in Github.

File finder - Besides creating new files you can search for files in any repository easily.

Linking lines - Github allows you to specify lines within the file of your repository by adding line number at the end of file URL.

Eclipse

Eclipse is an integrated development environment (IDE) written primarily in the Java language for developing applications in Java as well as in various programming languages such as C, C++, Python, Ruby etc.

Features:
You can use its Mylyn feature to track your own task-list using a local repository. You don't need to keep your browser open to see your tasks, you will get them by system tray notification.

With its software update mechanism, you will get the latest version of any framework or plugins that make developers job easy.

Eclipse platform can be used to develop rich client applications using plugins, including Ada, ABAP, C, C++, and more.

Grunt

Grunt is a JavaScript-based task runner that automates all repetitive tasks in a workflow and can be used as a command line tool for JavaScript objects. It reduces the workload from you while performing repetitive tasks like unit testing, minification, linting, compilation, etc.

You can use Grunt to automate any of your tasks with a minimum effort using hundreds of plugins. After configuring Grunt the task runner will automate most of your mundane work process that makes your life a little easier as a developer.

Features:
Grunt minifies JavaScript, CSS files, testing files, CSS preprocessor files such as SAAS, LESS etc.

Grant includes in-built tasks for extending the functionality of plugins and scripts.

It accelerates the development process and increases the performance of your projects.

It has a simple approach that includes tasks in JS and configures in JSON.

This tool reduces the chance of errors while performing repetitive tasks.

Conclusion:
Certainly, this not the end of the list, instead, this is the beginning of it. Further, at PromozSEO (Android, PHP web development, Digital Marketing, and SEO training in India), we recommend you to discover and explore other powerful open-source tools and software during the course of your web and Android development projects. All you need to do is dig deeper and find out the one that lets you develop the next big thing.

Top comments (4)

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geocine profile image
Aivan Monceller

Seems like a list that you would jump into a few years back. Now, most of these things have a real 2019 edition.

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brsjsk profile image
Boris Joskic

I thought the same thing..Was surprised to see Bower in the list

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hindemostwoo profile image
Hindemost-Woo

I'm just now moving from getting my tool list functional to having 150ish downloads on a project. What should I use instead of Bower? It's the only one I wasn't already aware of before

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hindemostwoo profile image
Hindemost-Woo

Eventghost and Tasker are the ones to watch for cli,macro and automation. windows/Android.