Tools That Will Make Your Software Developer Day-to-Day Easier

Work is already as stressful as it is. Even if you love your job and every day challenges, chances are you’ll be very grateful for having some handy tools as side-kicks.

We asked three team mates to share their holy grails when it comes to make their weekly 40 hour journey go as breezily as possible. Just hear them out 👀:

Daniel Paiva, Junior Software Developer and curator of Lord of The Ring memes:

‘The tool that has been my loyal side-kick, helping me be more productive, from first grade all the way to today: the notebook. There is so much that you can do with it. I use it to help me think, to visualize my ideas, to organize my daily tasks, to just do a quick sketch while on a break… nothing beats the simplicity of a notebook. There are digital options, but to me nothing comes close to a physical notebook, you can do anything instantly in one of these: underline, add a comment, add a chart, add a list… plus you can always have it on the side of the desk, for quick access. It is all so much easier with pen and paper.’

Tiago Borba, Senior Software Developer and Amazon shopping expert:

‘Tool 1: Meld 

Purpose: Find differences between files and folder structures in most popular OS’s and file systems. Have you ever needed to compare two large source datasets that were not under version control? Meld is a tool that will provide you a visual, diff-like experience for any given file or directory you point it to, and seamless allow merging of differences into a combined dataset which you can then save somewhere else.

Tool 2: Docker

Purpose: Allows running sandboxed systems so that you can seamlessly deploy apps or systems based on multiple components Docker containers are lightweight virtual machines that can be spooled from a simple configuration file called the Dockerfile. In less than a minute and with 2 or 3 lines, you can have a minimal Linux, Windows Server or other base image that serves as a platform for your apps, and this simple file can be shared across stakeholders who will then have a replicated environment that runs exactly like yours, provided they also have docker. With Docker-compose, Docker’s Platform as a Service (PaaS) capability becomes infrastructure where you can have multiple containers for individual purposes, or even spool multiple of the same to scale your solution physically and/or geographically. Most cloud solutions are now docker compatible or adaptable, which means that if you already have a Dockerfile or a docker-compose pipeline, getting it over the web is pretty much trivial.’

Gil Moutinho, Software Developer and Kermit, The Frog connoisseur

To me, using a Git GUI client, although not essential, is highly recommended. And before you come and tell me that GUIs are for noobs and the command line is for pros, let me remind you that Cristiano Ronaldo does not wear boots from the 60s.
If you just commit, pull, push, and little else, the command line is more than enough for you. But if you create patches and stashes, if you do cherry picks, resets, rebases or interactive rebases, if you like to stage specific lines from your files, or if you just like to look at your history graph, a GUI will speed up your work immensely.

Sure, we can’t let these tools carry us on their back, but who doesn’t love to ease things out? 🙂 Share your favourite tools with us: hello@exaud.com

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