15 Best Productivity Tools for Developers
As a developer, you’re always on the lookout for new tools that speed up your workflow from design to development to deployment. And, it is often daunting or rather distracting to find new tools that are not just tough on the competition but promise to help you get more work done.
Most developers spend more than 8 hours in front of our monitors each day and any tool that makes your life even 1% easier is kind of a big deal.
Thankfully, there are a lot of amazing tools that are gaining popularity among developers and they will certainly boost your productivity. In this post, we take a look at some of them.
Also read: How to find answers as a software developer
Productivity tools for developers
The productivity tools make your work faster and better in less time.
Note-taking tools
Note-taking tools are one of the most effective tools to boost your productivity as a developer.
Note-taking apps have been around as long as computers, but they’re only now becoming powerful enough to handle the complexity of software development. And the note-taking tools that can handle code and rich text are especially useful for developers.
These two note-taking apps are the best suited for the developers:
1. Notion
Notion is an all-in-one tool for note-taking as well as project management. It helps you write, plan, collaborate and get organized.
The best thing is, you can directly write code snippets with syntax highlighting (for almost all the popular programming languages) inside Notion is great to take notes while learning.
It can run directly in your browser but has desktop and mobile apps as well.
2. Obsidian
Obsidian is another powerful note-taking app to organize your thoughts and take programming notes. It is a markdown editor that helps you connect ideas and build knowledge graphs, with speed, power, and flexibility in mind.
The best thing about the app is, it supports bi-directional linking and runs offline on your device.
Project management tools
Project management tools reduce the burden of communication and synchronization tasks for developers. They increase productivity by providing all the information about project status at a glance. Developers can have full control over their work, no matter how big or small their team is.
Basically, project management (PM) tools help you optimize your time, organize your tasks, communicate with the team, monitor the progress, and have an overview of all your projects.
Some of the PM tools popular among developers are:
3. Asana
Asana is an online project management software that helps to manage your projects and tasks in order to improve productivity. Asana should be in the toolbox of every developer, especially those who work in distributed teams.
Asana is a tool that allows us to plan our projects, assign tasks, track progress, collaborate on projects, and share files.
4. Notion
Notion is also a great project management tool. However, it isn’t as powerful compared to other project management tools like Jira or Asana, but it’s easier to use and you can organize your projects however you like.
The service is free for personal use, but you’ll have to pay a monthly subscription if you want to use it for work-related tasks.
Time management tools
Time Management is the process of planning and organizing your work so that you can complete it in the most effective way possible. It involves setting goals, prioritizing tasks according to importance or urgency, and scheduling them accordingly.
The best time management tools for developers are those that can handle both their personal and professional commitments in an easy to use and cost-effective manner.
Some of the time management tools that are popular among developers are:
5. Google Calendar
Google Calendar is a great time management tool that helps you get more things done. Every developer must learn how to use this tool effectively to increase productivity.
Many developers have reported spending time on unproductive activities. And, whether it’s about keeping track of meetings, deadlines, or personal activities, Google Calendar can help you stay organized and aware of your schedule throughout the day.
6. Toggl
Toggl is an online time tracking tool that can help you improve productivity as a developer. It offers a simple interface, allowing you to quickly start the timer on a project, task, or activity.
Toggl also has an extension called Toggl Track which allows you to track time while on your browser.
Communication tools
Even though communication isn’t necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when you think about developer productivity, it can be a powerful tool for boosting your productivity.
Some of the well-known communication tools for developers are:
7. Slack
Slack is a communication tool for teams that allows for real-time messaging, file sharing, archiving, and searching. It also offers voice and video calls on top of integrations with third-party tools like Notion, Google Drive, Salesforce, Dropbox, Asana, Twitter, and Zendesk.
Slack’s main purpose is to make team collaboration easier by providing an easy way to communicate with your teammates.
8. Discord
Discord is another great communication tool that is often used by developers. It helps to eliminate the hassle of sending emails back and forth for every tiny update.
Once you are in Discord, you can create channels or text boxes that would help to organize your discussion from one place.
IDEs and code editors
Developers spend most of their time inside an IDE or a code editor and choosing the perfect tool definitely helps improve productivity.
9. Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is one of the most popular code editors available right now. It’s free and open-source and has a huge community behind it.
It’s also a favorite among developers because of its wide selection of tools and extensions that can improve the productivity of any developer. Not to mention, it supports a wide variety of programming languages.
10. Spyder
Spyder IDE is a powerful tool that simplifies the process of writing and testing Python code, saving you the hassle of working in several windows at once.
You can use it to write, debug, track issues, and conduct data analysis all in one place.
11. Eclipse
Eclipse is a popular integrated development environment (IDE) used in Java and other JVM languages. The wide range of features and its easy integration with other tools makes it one of the most loved tools among developers.
It has a large number of plugins that add new functionality to the IDE. This helps improve the productivity of developers by providing them with all the tools required for their projects under one roof. A typical developer doesn’t need to switch between different applications for different tasks, which saves a lot of time.
Miscellaneous tools
Here are more tools that will boost your productivity as a developer:
12. Wappalyzer
Wappalyzer is a browser extension that helps you identify what technologies a website is using. It detects content management systems, e-commerce platforms, web frameworks, server software, and more.
13. Ray.so
Ray.so is a great tool to take screenshots of your code to share it on social media or embed it on your blog. It automatically detects your code and offers syntax highlighting and makes the code snippet look good.
Carbon is another free tool for the same thing, but Ray.so looks more polished.
14. Github Gists
Software developers love to share and collaborate and Github Gists are a great way to do this, especially for quick one-off solutions.
They’re handy for sharing code snippets because you don’t have to create a new Git repository, which can be time-consuming if you’re just trying to share some code or ask a question.
15. Zoho Annotator
Zoho Annotator is a browser extension that lets you take screenshots and annotate them. It has multiple features like blur-sensitive information, crop image, annotating local images, etc.
And the best thing is, you can also take full-page screenshots by using this tool.
Final words
While there are hundreds of tools available on the web for streamlining your development workflow, there are some that rise above the rest. These tools are easy to install and even easier to use, and they can help you become an even more productive developer.
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