Top Five Software Developer Tools

Working as a software developer means you probably use many different kinds of tools to do your job. The role will mostly involve you developing code and integrating into an existing system, or developing code for a new system. Let’s take a look at what I think are the top five software developer tools.

IDE Software

This one is quite an obvious one – the tool that actually lets you write the code. 

The IDE software (Integrated Development Environment), otherwise known as the application that’s used by developers to write code, is probably one of the most useful software developer tools to use.

The IDE will depend on the programming language you’re using – Visual Studio for .NET applications, Eclipse for Java development, or SQL Server Management Studio for SQL Server development. It will most likely come with the language development kit and will allow you to write the code easier.

Most of the IDEs have common features such as line counters, debug mode, compiling, and output windows. However, depending on the IDE, you may be able to use many more useful features such as:

• Code refactoring – allowing you to change a piece of code in one section and for the entire project to be updated
• Object creation – a user interface to allow code to be generated to create objects or properties easily, rather than developing from scratch
• Code commenting – allowing you to automatically add code for functions, parameters, outputs and errors
• Performance monitoring – analysing the performance of code and seeing where the bottlenecks are
• Code formatting – automatically format a code module based on the settings you’ve provided (e.g. tab spacing, keywords, capitalisation)

IDEs have all kinds of extra features , but if you do a bit of research you can find out what features would be useful to you.

 Notepad++

Another one of the software developer tools to use is a program called Notepad++. This is an easy to use yet feature-packed tool that allows reading and editing of text-based files. It’s a big improvement over the standard Windows Notepad application, and even Wordpad.

It has many features that are handy for software developers, such as:

• Language selection – select a pre-defined language from the menu, and the code will format according to that programming language’s keywords and comments.
• Compare – a plugin is available for Notepad++ that allows you to compare two files, side by side, which is very helpful for merging code and finding differences in files.
• Find in Files – the ability to search for a specific text value in files in a directory, allowing you to find instances of code or words easily.

If you’re not a fan of Notepad++ or if you use something else, there are other tools out there that perform similar functions to this. The concept of using an advanced text editor is helpful. It’s great for other types of files that you don’t use an IDE for, such as log files and XML files.

 Document Management System

A document management system is a great tool for software developers to use. It’s a system that is used to store and manage all of the documentation that is used by the team or by the company. This can come in two formats:

• A document repository, such as SharePoint, that stores requirements documents, diagrams, testing documents and other kinds of documentation
• An internal documentation system, such as a Wiki, that the team can view and edit as needed.

Having somewhere to store and manage your documentation is helpful for a software development team.

It might seem like a good idea to keep your documents on your own drive, or send via email. However, using a document management system provides extra benefits, such as having a central place to store files, in-built version control, and access of files to other team members.

 BrowserStack

This web-based tool can simulate many different browser environments on different operating systems. Test on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, using browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera.

It’s a great software developer tool to check how your web-based application will look on various browsers. This is especially useful for those older browsers (such as IE6) which display very differently. While it’s not a free service, it can be very useful and save time with environment setups and configuration.

Find out more about this tool at http://www.browserstack.com/

 Google

This might seem like an irrelevant suggestion or a bit too vague, 

I think Google, or a search engine tool in general, is a great addition to a software developer’s list of tools that can be used. IDE software does have some help guides and API libraries included, but they lack the ability of other people’s opinions and experiences. This is where a search comes in.

Google searches can help software developers by:

• Searching for syntax – You might know the name of a function, but aren’t sure what the parameters or data types are. You might need to see an example of it in some code. Google searches can help with this, especially for those commands and functions that aren’t used very often.
• Help with error messages – We’ve all come across error messages that are vague, cryptic, or don’t make sense. Most of them come with an error code. Using a search engine, we can look up the error that occurred, and it will often show an explanation, the cause, and what we can do to fix it.
• Code samples – Many times when developing we need to create some code to solve a certain problem. A lot of the time, these problems have already been solved by other developers, and the code has been shared on the Internet. If you’re looking for some information on how to code something, or some general code to perform a task, do a search and you might find that someone has already developed it for you.

 Hopefully these suggestions have helped you.