35 Development Tools That Every Software Developer Must Try

There are two kinds of tools for developers: the tools programmers use and the ones they don’t. Some applications and services become a fun distraction for a few days, whereas other utilities remain a part of a developer’s workflow for years.  The software market has been rapidly growing for the past decades and there’s no shortage of tools to cover. 

But in this article, we tried to highlight the development tools that have stood the test of time and become an integral part of many developers’ workflows. 

Communication

Geekbot

Geekbot solves one of the most pressing problems for developers: wasting time in meetings. Our tool replaces tedious and useless status meetings with short and automated questionnaires sent directly in Slack or MS Teams. 

By answering Geekbot’s questions in Slack or MS Teams, developers can participate in Daily Standups and Retrospectives on their own terms: spending mere seconds to share their progress without being distracted from coding. 

Such an approach allows programming teams to reduce the time they spend on meetings and drastically reduce the number of interruptions while keeping all the benefits of Agile ceremonies. 

With Geekbot, development teams can automate Daily Standup meetings, retrospectives, and team well-being surveys. In addition, Geekbot can help managers conduct anonymous surveys, and prepare for one-on-one meetings and monthly meetings. 

Try Geekbot’s free plan and save hours of developer’s time while boosting engagement and efficiency of all your meetings!

Zoom

Zoom is the pinnacle of modern video communication and countless reviews praise Zoom for stability, speed, and high participant ceiling. But its set of features make the tool especially useful for remote development teams. 

For starters, Zoom allows hosting meetings using the same link which is extremely useful for conducting recurring meetings, and devs, especially those practicing Agile methodology, have these in abundance. 

Features such as screen sharing, annotations, and recording help developers conduct effective code reviews and brainstorming sessions. Lastly, Zoom comes with free webinar features so that the development team can host Q&A sessions and invite industry leaders for shared learning. 

Dropbox

Dropbox is the perfect tool for connecting teams while simultaneously enabling the sharing of files without the need for cross-copying. Files are automatically updated and accessible in all time zones to all project participants who have the link. It makes business communication and file sharing effortless. 

Dropbox is an essential part of high-profile projects, enabling streamlined data exchange for major airlines like Finnair and top-tier software development teams such as Reaktor. Dropbox simplifies business setup, file servers, admin rights, and firewalls, granting easy access to shared information files. 

The effective sharing of files helps developers manage projects from end to end, save time during project hand-offs, and enhance collaboration with non-development departments. 

Code Management and Testing

GitHub

If you don’t want to lose code, GitHub is for you. This cloud-based repository hosting service allows for the storage of Git command-line tools. The many features offer a web-based interface that enables access control and collaboration support with wikis and basic task management on each project.

GitHub is ideal for entry-level developers because it backs up code, supporting your local PC. This is a relief for student projects where careers are developed based on successful coding and making sense of codes. GitHub also enables version control and collaboration between different code branches.

Bitbucket

For a version control tool, try Bitbucket to enable collaboration with your software development team. Integrate it with project management apps like Jira and Trello for continuous delivery and to create task cards. With BitBucket, it’s possible to build source code, as well as test and deploy the code using the CI/CD solution. 

Great feedback loops ensure the whole process team is included, from engineering to planning and design. Using Bitbucket Pipelines, your team can continuously integrate their processes for efficiency while using the Git repository to ensure code security and availability.

Continuous delivery is ensured by integrating the Bitbucket server with Bamboo for testing and deployment. It combines an automated build process and a perpetual license.

Selenium 

When looking for quality assurance, Selenium is the go-to product for developers. The three main products are Selenium WebDriver, Selenium Grid, and Selenium IDE. This open-source software allows for the testing of multiple programming languages, main operating systems, and browsers. Though free, it can professionally compete with paid software alternatives. 

It is currently being used for QA by many companies like Google, Netflix, and Hubspot. With the ease of learning Selenium, it is ideal for start-ups who have a low entry point as it offers excellent flexibility. It doesn’t require users to learn a new programming language or transcribe code. 

IDE

IntelliJ 

Working in an integrated development environment requires a platform such as IntelliJ. With Java programming language at its core, IntelliJ offers a cross-platform approach for tool building in any programming language. Under the Apache 2.0 licensing, you can build royalty free products, plugins, and to scale IDEs. 

Components of IntelliJ IDEA, the developer tool using IntelliJ, include: a text editor, virtual filing, a UI framework, a test runner, and a debugger. IntelliJ IDEA is an intuitive tool, offering helpful code completions where appropriate, speeding up coding and letting developers focus on creating.

Visual Studio Code

Microsoft developed Visual Studio Code to be a source code editor that works on Linux, Mac, and Windows. With a great range of features including intelligent code completion, embedding Git, debugging, and snippets, Visual Studio Code offers great potential to coders. It can facilitate the installation of different extensions and be customised to meet your needs.  

Visual Studio Code features the same Node.js development as JavaScript and TypeScript, and offers great tooling, making web technologies like CSS, JSON, and HTML fun. By combining the best of native, web, and language-specific technologies, Visual Studio Code developers can utilize a reliable and fast source code editor and increase their productivity with add-ons, shortcuts, and templates.

PyCharm

Where Visual Studio Code and IntelliJ offered IDEs for Java, Pycharm offers the alternative for Python. By providing a graphic debugger, code analysis, and integration with VCSes, PyCharm offers web development and data science support. Remote development is enabled with remote interpreters. 

PyCharm offers cross platform functionality and advanced Python refracturing, including extracting method, introducing constant and variable, and pull up and push down. The integrated Python debugger comes in handy, and developers can write their own plugins to deal with errors and bugs. As is, there are over 1,000 plugins that are compatible with PyCharm. This IDE offers a complete set of tools for Python development and the creation of Python applications. 

Graphic Resources

Font Awesome

Font Awesome is one of the best services for effortlessly adding icons to your web project. There is no need to get creative with code or managing files. Designed for use with inline elements, you can use consistent HTML elements to add to your project. For convenience, use the <i> tag or <span>.

Additionally, icons can be styled in terms of sizing, alignment, color, listing, and rotation. Full customization can be achieved with adding your own CSS rules to the project code.

JS Paint

This remake of MS Paint is built in Javascript with the classic Windows-95 styling. You will recognize the toolbars located on the left side with the color palette at the customary bottom left corner. 

Painting is done on a blank canvas or web images that can be annotated. Drag and drop images to import. Try it out with the JSPaint.ml website, which is supported by most major browsers. 

Code Editors

SublimeText

SublimeText, a shareware cross-platform source code editor has a Python API and supports a range of programming and markup languages. The different plugins are typically open source and free licence. The interface can be rendered using the GPU on your Linux, Windows, or Mac system, yielding a user interface of 8,000 resolution quality at a lower power cost.

Complete rendering is possible based on the existing project code. SublimeText aids first-time users with links to definitions. Code navigation is intuitive with side and tab bars and GoTo features. Support is available for JavaScript adaption.

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a licence-free software text editor similar to UltraEdit, only it’s free. With tabbed editing, developers can work on multiple projects in the same window. Compatible with Windows, higher execution speed and smaller program size is possible. 

This text editor features code folding, limited code completion, markup languages, scripting, syntax highlighting, but intelligent code completion is not enabled. Notepad++ supports over 78 distinct syntaxes including Ruby, XML, Java, and Python among others. Other notable features include autosave, a find and replace function, simultaneous editing, and a robust plugin architecture. 

Vim

Fast and powerful Vim text editor was designed in 1991 for Unix. However, it works on Linux and Mac too. Small and easy to operate, this programme was originally based on the Stevie editor, and it operates not on clicking tools buttons, but with keyboard combinations instead. This allows developers to literally type commands with combination keys, increasing coding speed. With multiple plugins, developers can code anything with it.

Vim can be used for command-line interface, and it can also operate as a standalone app for GUI. Best of all, Vim is free and the licensing only requires users to make donations to the children of Uganda, combining coding with charity.

Features that make Vim popular among coders and developers include the low memory requirements, the ease of making commands, the multiple windows and diverse buffers that allow for working on more than one project simultaneously. 

Atom

For newbie and professional developers alike, Atom is a welcoming text and source code editing application. Powered by GitHub, Atom is fully customizable with third-party installations, themes, and features. Python and R are consistently used for data science, but there are other programming languages also supported, including C, C++, and CSS among others. 

With cross-platform editing, desktop use of Atom can include IDE. The package manager lets developers create and install their own packages. With helpful auto completion, Atom can autofill code segments according to characters and words. 

Project Management and Productivity Tools

Trello

Managing a team is never easier than with Trello’s amazing boards, lists, job cards, and interactivity. Projects can be organized and prioritized for smooth workflow. Communication is also facilitated with notes, and team members can see the visualization of the work process to know where they (or their tasks) are in the workflow.

Simply click and drag cards to change their status, notify different team members, and start new tasks. Assign different colors for different team members to create a clear identity, change the background to suit each project, and click and drag files for uploading. React to communications with emojis and check progress against timelines and checklists. 

Asana

Although Asan does not aim to be a development-specific project management tool, with its wide range of features the tool can be useful to cross-functional teams that involve both developers and non-developers. 

With project views to suit the team’s style, collaboration becomes easy and streamlined. Asana’s list view, timeline, and boards makes it easy to see which team member needs to do what, when something is due, what’s priority, and focus on the task at hand. 

Stay up-to-date with your tasks with the platform’s real-time sync feature. With automation and app integration, you can save time, streamline work processes, and decrease errors. Asana offers various plans to fit different budgets. There’s a free option too.

Jira

An Atlassian product, Jira is popular among software and agile teams to help manage their work. It started out as a bug and issue tracker, but it has evolved so you can select or create your own workflow to easily plan, track, release, and report your software projects.  

As a software development tool, Jira is cloud- and subscription-based and integrates with Confluence, an Atlassian tool, and Github, Salesforce, Zendesk, and others. Choose between Kanban, Scrum, Scrumban boards and prioritization features for your projects to flow smoothly. With boards that are flexible, create next-gen projects and add your own issue types with a drag-and-drop interface.   

Pomotodo

Based on GTD theory and the famous Pomodoro technique, Pomotodo is a to-do time management application. Efficiently manage your workflow by noting down your ideas, scheduling tasks, reviewing what’s been done, and adding reminders. 

With apps for iOS, MacOs, WindowsOS, and Android, you can keep your projects on track and get work insights to check your productivity. With the pro version, unlock the ability to have your work sync with your calendar, set your own productivity duration, and create goals to beat procrastination. 

Optimization

JS Compress

Being stuck with an oversized JavaScript file is a serious productivity dampener. Use JS Compressor to minify JS files by up to 80%. To use, simply copy and paste the code to the service screen or upload multiple files to combine, then compress. Simple and easy to use, and with no license fee, this online compressor is a gem for developers.

Compression is done with UglifyJS 3 and babel-minify to reduce file size and bandwidth draw. You can use JSCompress to speed up download times, increase visitor capacity by combining files as one HTTP request, and execute scripts at greater speed.

CSS Compressor

Want to make your website load faster? Use CSS Compressor to compress CSS files up to four different levels of compression. Each level will influence the legibility versus the amount of compression. 

This free online tool can aid developers in reducing CSS code size. This helps websites rank better, and the site also offers great links to additional resources, making it a one-stop compression feature for all your code compression needs.

Web Resizer

For reducing image size without cutting quality, Web Resizer is ideal for the avid developer. Upload the image to be resized, and Web Resizer will automatically resize it to the most optimized size. This app can resize images of up to 5 MB in size. Reduced size images are downloadable in JPEG format. 

Additional features of Web Resizer include a range of image correction tools such as image rotation and correction, height vs width changes, borders, color contrast changes, and saturation. 

Cloud Providers

Microsoft Azure

A favorite with developers, Microsoft Azure is used to deploy and manage web applications. It encompasses over 600 cloud services and support is offered for most databases and tools that developers use. Integration allows for improved response of teams in the Azure-based environment. 

Azure is your end-to-end solution, accommodating the process from development to an automated deployment with a list of options along the way. Data support allows for highly functional data ingestion from a range of sources and processing of data for business intelligence purposes. Linked services include natural language processing, machine learning, and open-source frameworks like MXNet, Keras, and Tensorflow.

AWS Amazon

Amazon Web Services offers a low-cost cloud computing infrastructure platform that supplies reliable and scalable solutions to businesses with its cloud-based software products. Services and products include storage, computing, and database needs as well as analytical and networking tools. More than 175 AWS services are on offer. Acquiring new services or functionalities is cost-effective since there is no additional capital investment. 

With AWS Services, you can access the fundamentals that help public sector businesses in quickly responding to new and challenging business needs. For first-time developers, this is an elementary platform to use as no coding knowledge is needed; however, you will need basic knowledge of technology and systems such as client and server interfacing.

Google Cloud Platform

The Google Cloud Platform is a suite of cloud computing services that are available to Google users via the same infrastructure as their other services like Gmail and Google Search. The best way to use them is to identify your primary computing requirements. 

Do you need SaaS, Paas, or LaaS? The Google Cloud Platform hosts all these services and more on its vast infrastructure, managing the flow of data and coding products on its servers located in various regions around the world. This enables companies and developers to negate some of the infrastructure and software needs that they would otherwise have to invest in.

DevOps Tools

Terraform

For large organizations or teams of developers having infrastructure operating at scale can be a challenge, which is where Terraform comes in. This is an IaC tool, and it helps developers build, change, and adjust infrastructure with different cloud services providers. 

With Terraform, it is possible to manage larger teams with similar but also diverse infrastructure needs such as low-level instances, networking, and storage. It can also efficiently handle high-level DNS entries and SaaS features while integrating current cloud service providers and generating in-house solutions.

Terraform will create an execution plan for developmental approval before making changes, enabling effective management of infrastructure. Automation becomes possible with minimal human management as the execution plan has incremental changes that are applied while respecting dependencies.

Ansible

Developers can easily deal with automation challenges by using Ansible. This tool enables the configuration of multiple computers at once using elementary instructions. Using this open-source tool, a developer can engage with configuration management to run automated cloud provisioning, intra-service orchestration, and application deployment. By describing the interrelation of all your IT infrastructure, Ansible manages all your different systems at once. 

With an elementary programming language (YAML), even amature developers can issue automation jobs using Ansible. The programming language is close to English, therefore easily understood. Deployment is made easy since there are no agents or additional security infrastructures required. 

Jenkins

Testing is essential for effective continuous integration. With an open-source automation tool like Jenkins, developers can automate integration, continuous delivery, or development life-cycle processes. With a wide range of plugins (over a thousand plugins are available), users can expect support for just about every tool required for the delivery process via the different pipelines in Jenkins.

Users can get a fresh build on an ongoing basis with Jenkins as testing, integration, and deployment becomes continuously automated. Since Jenkins is built in JavaScript, it is compatible with most platforms, and best of all, it’s free.

TeamCity

TeamCity is a continuous integration tool for developers that is written in Java. It is commercially free licensed, with a limit of 100 builds and three build agents upon registration. 

Configuration of your build is done in DSL code, which creates the pipelines using TeamCity’s web UI. With the pipelines being configured in code, developers can easily reuse and manage these. With TeamCity, pipelines can be optimized by reusing artifacts and increasing the efficiency of the build queue. This can result in over 30% saving on build time.

Using templates, developers can duplicate settings through a building extraction process that requires no rebuilding of pipelines for new projects.

Azure DevOps (ex TeamFoundation Server)

When teams work together, collaborating and implementing efforts toward achieving the final product can be a challenge. Enter TeamFoundation Server (TFS). This Microsoft tool allows teams to do what they do best: create. Projects are stored on the Team Foundation Server, giving team members a centralized location from which they can access their work and coordinate their efforts. 

Team projects have a portal in the form of a Windows SharePoint website. Collective storage and sharing of documents are facilitated with main elements like source code management, project management, testing and reporting, and release management.

Prometheus

Prometheus is ideal for development projects requiring real-time metrics. This license free software app is designed for monitoring and reporting events. Projects are coded in Go, and the license is registered with Apache 2 licensing. The source code can be downloaded from GitHub, and data is stored as metrics. 

Prometheus is considered a multi-dimensional data model since metrics can be queried using specific data labels in real time. Data is stored in a time series. Since it stores data locally on discs, users can retrieve answers to queries faster.

Learning

Coursera

Coursera e-learning platform lets students enrol online for a range of career-defining development courses. All courses are created by experts in their diverse fields including programming, web development, data science, and many others. With instructors from world-renowned universities, students gain hands-on experience that they can apply in the real world. 

There are different choices of classes available on Coursera. These include certified courses, audits, degrees, and specializations. With audits, students can learn for free; however, they can’t receive any certification. When students are ready to specialize in a particular field, they enrol for up to five courses uniquely grouped for that field, which once completed, entitles the student to a specialized certificate. Importantly, developers can study IT degrees at Coursera entirely online, which is great in a digital world.

Udemy

Another online learning platform is Udemy. Instructors and students connect with a huge selection of courses on offer. Developers can further build their skills and knowledge with a huge range of courses on development, programming, software testing, and web and mobile development. 

Courses are designed to help develop a particular skill, so if a designer needs to work on their web development skills, for instance, they can easily find an instructor who’s course they’d like to take and enroll for this using the extensive library of programs. The method of training usually takes the form of videos and course materials with some tasks, and within some courses there are tests too. Registration guarantees lifetime access to the courses you have enrolled for, meaning you can go back and review the material online at any stage. 

EDX

For developers who are motivated by a more formal qualification, EDX is the way to go. This online learning platform partners with some of the world’s top traditional institutions like Harvard, issuing certificates in some of their courses. Whether you are a developer interested in a basic overview of a new field in development or more interested in a specific and advanced course into a particular field such as Python programming language, EDX has a lot to offer. 

Learning happens via online forums, videos, tasks, tests, and quizzes. With expert instructors from some of the top institutions in the U.S., you can be confident of receiving the best materials by affiliates of Berkley, Harvard, and MIT.

Codepen

Sometimes the best way to learn is from those who are already in the field, and Codepen allows new coders and developers to learn from experienced pros. It is essentially a code playground where developers can upload a snippet of code called a “pen” to the platform to see how it reacts on a sample webpage. 

Codepen allows for interaction with other coders, sharing ideas, learning, and troubleshooting. The online community offers helpful suggestions, and new users can learn from the coding others have uploaded. Front-end developers can discover and share new and different coding structures using HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

If your developers are in dire need to save time and preserve their focus throughout the day, try Geekbot. Geekbot allows developers to get rid of tedious and long-winded meetings, facilitate collaboration in teams, and improve their focus by conducting automated asynchronous meetings directly in Slack.

Try Geekbot 10-member free plan and join teams like Shopify and Github who have already redefined their remote productivity!