Software Engineer Tools I Can't Live Without
Discover a collection of powerful tools that can enhance the productivity and efficiency of software engineers.
Below are tools that I use on a daily basis that my life as a software engineer easier.
Command Line
- iTerm: A must if you interact with the command line much on macOS
- Oh My Zsh: Improves the UX of using the terminal
Programming
- IntelliJ IDEA: for must anything JVM
- Visual Studio Code: for just about anything else
- PlantUML: UML Diagrams as code. Although Mermaid is a close second since it’s naively supported with GitHub.
- Postman: A must have tool for testing APIs
- SourceTree: This one is controversial to command line purist. I like the ease of managing Git repositories. The less I have to think, the better.
- Lens: Getting a peak into your k8s clusters.
Communication
- Slack: The de facto chat and workflow app for the software industry. No, Microsoft Teams is not a replacement.
- Krisp: A must have if you are do a lot of voice calls
- Loom: Perfect for the remote workforce. Use it to asynchronously communicate ideas, pull requests, demos, bugs, how-to videos, and anything else you can think of.
- Excalidraw: Quick diagramming and whiteboarding tool
Organization
- Notion: Great note taking and organizing-your-life tool.
- Feedly: If you’re like me you follow a ton of blogs. Feedly aggregates all of these blogs into a single location.
Learning
- O’Reilly Learning: Awesome collection of books and videos. Up to date and even some early releases. Can’t say enough good things about this resource.