10 Tools To Make You a Better Software Developer

As a software developer, you need to learn the best practices to create a product roadmap and have the right tools to create specific programs, develop software solutions, monitor performance and modify programs when needed.

Software developers are in charge of creating the code and design for a program. Thus, careers like these call for a lot of collaboration between stakeholders and clients. Along with advanced development tools, software developers also need online collaboration and project management tools.

Following is a curated list of software development tools you should be using in 2019:

1 ProofHub - Project Management

ProofHub is an online project management tool for developers. It has everything that you need for a development workflow - task management, online proofing, Kanban boards, and other advanced communication features.

The best part is that it comes with a powerful interface that can be quickly adapted by anyone whether they are a developer or not. So, you can work with clients, designers, and other teams at a single place and finish projects on time.

Create, comment, and update tasks on the go
Easy-to-use drag and drop interface
See the progress of tasks in a glance
Integrates with Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, OneDrive

2 Jest - Javascript

Jest is a powerful Javascript testing framework where developers can make tests to keep track of large objects. It allows you to run parallel tests making it one of the fastest software. In Jest, failed tests are performed at first and runs are reorganized depending on the time taken by the test files.

Write tests with a familiar and feature-rich API
Requires little configuration
Custom resolver helps you mock objects even out test’s scope

3 Atom - Integrated Development Environment

Atom is a text editor created by GitHub. It gives you the full freedom to customize and change the look of your UI and even add new features. The application is built with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Node.js integration. It is free and works across various operating systems such as OS X, Windows, or Linux.

Write code faster with smart and flexible autocomplete
Find, preview, and replace text
Split interface into multiple panels to compare and edit code

4 CodeWars- Skill development

CodeWars is the perfect tool to sharpen your skills and achieve mastery by training with others. It is a great way to familiarize yourself with programming fundamentals and various languages. It features a lot of programming challenges with different difficulty levels across different languages to challenge your knowledge.

Challenge coding skills on kata and even retrain with optimized approaches
Discuss the kata score, best practices, coding techniques with community centers
Choose from Java, SQL, C, C++, Go, Python, PHP, JavaScript and many more

5 Axure - Prototyping

Axure is the perfect tool that comes with the capability to create highly functional prototypes without writing a single line of code. It helps developers to create diagrams and handle documentation at a single place allowing them to create flowcharts, wireframes, mockups, user journeys and more.

Drag and drop elements from built-in or custom libraries
Annotate diagrams and prototypes to specify functionality, keep track of tasks
Multiple people can work on the same file at the same time
Generates a prototype in HTML and provides a link for sharing

6 Bootstrap - Frameworks

Bootstrap is an open-source framework for developing with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It lets you quickly prototype your ideas, build responsive and mobile-first websites. To make those web pages, just drag and drop its in-build components.

Wrapping containers, a powerful grid system, flexible media objects
Extensive pre-built components, powerful plugins built on jQuery
Choose from responsive and fixed-width container
Customize as per the needs and requirements

7 Codenvy - DevOps

Codenvy is a cloud-hosted workspace creator for teams interested in code development and data management. The workspaces are operated effortlessly and controlled with various APIs and extensions. It is customizable in nature allowing you to create your own workspaces, analyze performance, and collaborate. The good news is that it is designed in such a way that teams from all industries can use the tool without any learning curve.

Create workspaces with productive runtimes containing projects and tools
Built on Eclipse Che - open source cloud IDE
Sophisticated data deployment
Allows you to host their workspaces in the cloud or local servers

8 GitHub - Source Control

GitHub is a leading software development platform that brings together the largest community of developers to discover, share, and build better software. It takes collaboration to the next level by letting you manage projects, review code, and helping teams to share the workload. It takes care of your business needs by providing granular access controls to flexible hosting option.

Coordinate, track, and update work in one place
Mention other people quickly to keep them in the loop
Track updates, link issues and pull requests
Create review processes that easily fit into your workflow

9 Sparx Enterprise Architect - UML

Sparx Systems is an intuitive platform for software developers to visualize, analyze, test, and maintain your processes. The UML modeling tool helps you enable strong collaboration among team members while handling difficult tasks and complex projects. It works well for entry-level developers as well as robust teams due to its advanced modeling, designing, simulation features, and frameworks.

Manage complex projects with diagrams, model patterns, domain-specific profiles
Supports enterprise architecture frameworks for TOGAF and UPDM
Advanced simulation, testing tools, and team-based repository

10 Calendar - Scheduling Software

Calendar is a productivity tool that helps to save time using artificial intelligence and machine learning. It enables you to allow anyone to book the meeting time to your Calendar. Further, it prevents any clash of meeting timings and helps to analyze & improve your time spent on tasks. You can also simplify the scheduling process, organize and schedule meetings in a single click with Calendar. Hence, you can be more productive using Calendar at work.

Easily recognizes time zone
Prevents any hustle in multi-person scheduling
Calendar Analytics gives a detailed look at the team’s productivity

Conclusion

I hope all the software developers reading this post find the above tools useful. If you’ve already used one of the above tools, let us know about your favorite picks and their best features in the comments section.

Comments

[Robin Kretzschmar]

My experience with CodeWars is that the site is painfully slow. When submitting a solution, it takes somewhat between 30 seconds and 1 minute until it is submitted. Then after the cleanup when I try to submit the final solution, it is very slow again...

So this is no fun for me.

What are your experiences with the site's performance?

[Mobidi]

Same for me, I tried but it's a little disapointing, I believe there is other webapp like this one who work better but can't remember the name but you can look for a few others here :
reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comm...

[Robin Kretzschmar]

Thanks for the reddit thread, will check it out :)