Suraj Vishwakarma

Posted on Jun 12, 2023

Awesome List of the Best Developer Tools

#webdev #javascript #beginners #programming

Introduction

In this rapidly evolving tech world, we see lots of dev tools getting launched every day. Most of them aren’t great that can run in the long run but few of them are actually that can enhance the developing process. These tools can quickly help enhance productivity, efficiency, and the overall quality of their work.

I believe if there are tools that can help me in my workflow, I am open to trying. As this tool can help in increasing my productivity. We are going to look into some tools from codesearch to AI code-writing tools.

So, Let’s dive into the tools that can help in maximizing your coding prowess.

Documatic

A search engine for your codebase; Ask Documatic a question and find relevant code and insights in seconds

Documatic is a code search engine that queries through your codebase to find the related code block. It uses machine learning under the hood to find patterns in the code. It is quite important to understand the codebase before writing a single line of code. The search engine can help you in understanding the codebase.

Documatic understands natural language so you don't need to be an expert to make a query. As per your query, it will fetch you the code block from the codebase. Rather than being a normal code search tool, it also identifies a pattern in the codebase. You can also perform different tasks such as dependency mapping and generating a codebase report.

You can use documatic on the web, through your VS Code, and from Slack.
Here is the VS Code Extension link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Documatic.documatic

Docz

It's never been easier to document your things!

Documentation is the original source of knowledge about the tool and it later extends to form articles and videos on a specific topic. So, having well-structured and formatted documentation is necessary. At the same time, building documentation from scratch can take a lot of time. That’s why using a tool/framework to create documentation is preferred. Docz is one such tool to create a documentation site.

It is quite good-looking and has support for light and dark themes. Building a beautiful website using Docz is easy. The documentation is written in markdown which is the preferred way of writing the text for most of the developers.

Supabase

Supabase is an open source Firebase alternative for building secure and performant Postgres backends with minimal configuration.

If you follow my blog, then you definitely know this tool. It is one of the best tools that I discovered in the past year. I almost use this tool in every project without any hesitation. Supabase is a powerful backend-as-a-service platform that allows developers to easily build scalable web applications with serverless functions and a PostgreSQL database.

It has been my go-to tool for Authentication since I first used it. It supports Email, Phone, and 17 major third-party OAuth providers. It has a free tier that is best for building individual projects. You can always upgrade to another version whenever you need.

Their support system is quite fast and efficient. I have mostly used their free tier and never had a problem with the support system.

GitPod

Gitpod is an open-source development platform for remote development. Accelerate your team's developer experience, remote collaboration, and security - to ship new products faster and more securely.

This is available as a Chrome extension and as a stand-alone website. I mostly used the Chrome extension on GitHub. It provides me with an online editor in the form of VS Code. I use this extension to review code with changes. It has the full support of VS Code such as extension and theme.

Gitpod offers features like code navigation, intelligent code completion, and integrated terminal access. It also supports collaboration, allowing multiple developers to work on the same project simultaneously, with real-time code synchronization and shared development environments.

Postman

Postman simplifies each step of the API lifecycle and streamlines collaboration so you can create better APIs—faster.

Postman is an API development and testing tool. It allows developers to design, document, and test APIs easily. With Postman, you can make HTTP requests, view responses, and create automated test suites to ensure the proper functioning of your APIs.

Conclusion

All these tools are awesome tools that can help in boosting your productivity. I have been using these tools to enhance my productivity. I will definitely recommend you try these and integrate them into your workflow. Find what’s best suits your workflow.

I hope this article has helped you know some tools that will help in your workflow. Thanks for reading the article.

Top comments (17)

Mike Stemle • Jun 17 '23

It should be noted that some of these tools have known privacy problems, and Postman—for example—is able to access any secrets or credentials stored on their servers by your use of their cloud services. They're pretty transparent about this fact in their privacy policy.

It is generally a good idea to never put sensitive information into a third party system or service unless you have an NDA and contract in place with that third party.

In order to keep yourself and your organization safe:

Always read the TOS, EULA, and Privacy Policy
If you have a legal team, it is probably a good idea to have them review the terms, too
Do not share information with third parties who you don't have an agreement with, unless you're comfortable with that information being published everywhere on the internet (including with competitors or adversarial entities)
Make sure you know for sure whether the tools you're using phone home or send your information out.

No amount of convenience is worth a data breach.

Camilo Santana • Jun 29 '23 • Edited

Postman is able to access any secrets or credentials stored on their servers by your use of their cloud services

You mean this policy?

Postman personnel do not access private workspace
content except for:

security purposes
to assist the workspace owner with a support matter
to maintain the integrity of the Service
to comply with our legal obligations
if we have reason to believe the contents are in violation of the law, or
with your consent.

Note the "with your consent" and the legal obligation.

You enter into a business agreement with these kinds of services. You're partners. It may be best to avoid assuming an antagonistic relationship by default.

Mike Stemle • Jun 29 '23 • Edited

I do object to your assumption that I’m suggesting antagonism, my concern here is only for privacy and security.

I’m referring to this section under “Workspace contents”:

If your workspace is private, you control the access to your Content. If you include personal information or Sensitive Personal Information, that information may only be accessible to Postman in accordance with this Privacy Policy. Postman personnel do not access private workspace content except for:

security purposes to assist the workspace owner with a support matter

to maintain the integrity of the Service to comply with our legal obligations

if we have reason to believe the contents are in violation of the law, or

with your consent.

However, while we do not generally search for content in your workspaces, we may scan our servers and content to detect certain tokens or security signatures, known active malware, known vulnerabilities in dependencies, or other content known to violate the Postman EULA.

This means that Postman personnel have the ability to see inside everything you do, so if they have an internal bad actor, or they are breached, everything in your account may be compromised.

B. Burt • Jul 12 '23

Thank you for the info. I use Insomnia over Postman but now I wonder...

Does Insomnia have same/similar privacy issue as Postman?

Suraj Vishwakarma • Jun 12 '23

Which developer tools do you use most?

Krisztián Maurer • Jun 13 '23

I'm currently doing a lot of migration work in TypeScript, and I find this tool app.quicktype.io/?l=ts very helpful. It helps me create the old interface from a JSON object easily.