New developer tools transform coding workflows
Introduction
Developing software is getting more complex. As apps grow in scale and touch more users, developers face increasing demands to build higher quality features faster. This leads to frustration from spending countless hours on rote debugging, disjointed teamwork, tricky deployments, and performance issues in production. New innovative developer tools aim to solve these pain points by optimizing workflows across the coding lifecycle.
This article will highlight some of the most exciting new developer tools that help streamline workflows around debugging, testing, collaboration, deployment, and monitoring. By leveraging these modern solutions, developers can boost their productivity, reduce headaches, and take their coding skills to the next level. Whether it's reproducing bugs quicker, improving team coordination, or monitoring apps in production - these tools have something to offer.
We'll showcase real-world examples of developer tools that are transforming how modern engineers work. From log monitoring services to code review platforms, automation tools to communication apps, read on to discover new solutions you may want to incorporate into your development stack.
Debugging Tools to Squash Bugs Faster
Debugging is often cited as one of the most frustrating parts of a developer's job. When bugs inevitably crop up, developers waste huge amounts of time reproducing issues, adding print statements, and stepping through code line-by-line to diagnose root causes. New debugging tools help accelerate this tedious process.
Log Monitoring and Analytics
Log monitoring services like LogRocket and Datadog ingest log data from across an app's infrastructure and provide helpful visualizations for analyzing and debugging frontend, backend, mobile, and cloud services. Rather than digging through raw log files, these tools allow you to easily search and filter logs to surface relevant entries.
Key features include alerting for specific errors, metrics dashboarding, historical log access, and tools to replay user sessions leading up to a bug. For example, LogRocket helps developers reproduce frontend errors by replaying videos of actual user sessions along with associated console logs, network requests, component state, and other debugging context.
By centralizing scattered log data and providing analytics on top, log monitoring accelerates diagnosing tricky bugs that span frontend, backend, infrastructure, etc. The DevHunt debugging toolkit integrates with top solutions like LogRocket to further boost debugging productivity.
Advanced Debuggers
Modern debugger tools like Chrome DevTools, Firefox DevTools, and Visual Studio's built-in debugger provide powerful capabilities for inspecting JavaScript, .NET, Python, and other code. Developers can set breakpoints, walk through code step-by-step, analyze call stacks and variable values, profile memory and CPU usage, execute code in consoles, and more.
IDEs like Visual Studio, Eclipse, and Xcode also include advanced debuggers tailored for mobile, desktop, and web development. Paired with log monitoring, these tools enable rapid diagnosing and fixing of the toughest bugs.
Browse DevHunt's curated debugger tool directory to explore top solutions for React, Angular, Node.js, Java, C#, PHP, and more. Modern debugging tools like these allow developers to spend less time reproducing issues and more time building features users want.
Automated Testing Frameworks Drive Quality
Manually testing code is slow, inconsistent, and prone to human error. New automated testing frameworks help developers write comprehensive tests faster to catch bugs early and prevent regressions.
Popular open source testing tools like Jest, Mocha, JUnit, Selenium, and Gauge make writing unit, integration, end-to-end, and UI tests easier. Code coverage tools like Istanbul help ensure tests exercise your actual code thoroughly.
The DevHunt Showcase allows easy sharing and documentation of test suites across teams. With rigorous automated testing, developers gain confidence that new changes won't break existing functionality. This enables faster development velocity and higher quality code.
Browse DevHunt's testing tool directory to find solutions tailored for your tech stack and testing needs. Leveraging the newest testing frameworks can help developers release code faster without compromising on quality.
Collaboration Tools Connect Teams
Developing software is a team effort. Collaboration tools help distributed teams communicate better, streamline code review, track projects, and more.
Code Review Platforms
Code review tools like GitHub/GitLab pull requests, CodeStream, Upsource, and Phabricator enable easier collaboration during development. Developers can comment inline, compare versions, request changes, and approve code before it's merged.
Code reviews spread knowledge, improve code quality, and enable smoother handoffs between team members. DevHunt motivation tools like code review badges also incentivize engagement on popular open source projects.
Project Management Systems
Project management tools like Jira, Trello, Asana, and Monday.com provide enhanced task tracking, roadmapping, planning, and visibility into team progress. Custom workflows, boards, reports, reminders, and automation keep everyone aligned.
Integrations with communication and developer tools also minimize context switching. With robust project management, developers stay focused and teams deliver more predictably.
Team Communication Apps
Communication platforms like Slack, Discord, and Microsoft Teams enable frictionless team chat, video calls, and knowledge sharing. Integrations provide quick access to project updates and notifications without switching apps.
DevHunt communities also offer dedicated chat rooms for developers to connect and discuss ideas. With easy communication and information sharing, distributed teams collaborate seamlessly.
Browse DevHunt's collaboration tools directory to explore solutions that connect your team. With smoother coordination across code, projects, and communication, developers can focus on writing code rather than logistics.
Deployment and Monitoring Tools Simplify Operations
Once code is written, it needs to run reliably in production. Deployment and monitoring tools help streamline delivery workflows and provide visibility into apps after release.
Infrastructure Provisioning Automation
Infrastructure as code (IaC) tools like Terraform, CloudFormation, and Pulumi enable developers to define and provision infrastructure through code. Rather than configuring servers manually, you codify your infrastructure and use IaC tools to spin up resources predictably.
For example, with Terraform you can define AWS resources like load balancers, databases, and container clusters in configuration files and automatically create them on demand. This brings huge reliability and productivity benefits compared to manual work.
The DevHunt infrastructure library offers ready-made Terraform modules that provide quick wins. With IaC, teams minimize deployment headaches and accelerate delivery of apps.
Performance Monitoring and Alerting
Monitoring tools like Datadog, New Relic, and Prometheus give developers observability into apps after deployment. Custom metrics, thresholds, and alerting ensure uptime and performance.
For example, New Relic offers pre-built integrations for monitoring popular frameworks like React, .NET, and Spring Boot. Its dashboards surface key web, mobile, and backend metrics to optimize apps proactively. DevHunt's monitoring tool integration simplifies setup and provides status badges.
With greater telemetry data and visibility into apps post-deployment, teams can operate them better and delight users. Browse DevHunt's monitoring tools directory to find solutions matching your stack and needs.
Transform Your Coding Today
New developer tools are revolutionizing workflows across debugging, testing, team collaboration, deployment automation, and application monitoring. By incorporating modern solutions like the ones showcased here, engineers can boost their productivity, velocity, and satisfaction.
Tools that increase visibility, integration, automation, and analytics enable developers to focus on writing amazing code rather than fighting with tooling. Check out DevHunt's directory of new developer tools to discover options that can optimize your workflows today. The future of coding is bright!