Dev Tools to the Rescue — Part 2

In my previous article Dev Tools to the Rescue — Part 1, we looked at some of the best developer tools for software development, project management, continuous delivery/integrity, designing, testing, etc.

In this article, we’ll continue with tools that are helpful for purposes like monitoring, analysis, cloud development, security, etc.

Confluence

Confluence is a team collaboration application that allows teams to work together and share information and updates effectively. It may be seen as a wiki or knowledge base that organizes and stores all of the different projects’ information assets.

Features

• Provides real-time editing and publishing updates that highlight the changes, tracked with version history.
• Allows page and in-line and likes, comments, and visual elements such as emojis, images, and GIFs.
• Gives alerts when a user is assigned a task or tagged that helps everyone to stay in the loop.
• Provides full-text searching of all content, including comments, pages, and space descriptions.
• Pages or spaces can be imported from plain text files, or exported to HTML or PDF.

Pros

• Track and share project status easily.
• Automatic daily backup feature.
• Collaborative editing options.
• Updates on the latest documentation.

Cons

• Need a license, but it has a free trial.
• Need to refresh the page to see edits made by other users.

Postman

Postman is a platform that helps users in interacting with APIs. It provides a friendly user interface for constructing and sending requests and reading responses. It works on the backend and helps developers to test their APIS and make sure they are working as intended. It is seen by the industry as one of the best tools for web developers for API testing purposes.

Features

• Scalable API testing tool.
• Streamlines the process of API testing.
• You can build API before deploying code which helps in releasing reliable services.
• It helps in the exploration of APIs by sending different kinds of data and observing their response.
• Creates collections for API calls.

Pros

• Improves the quality and testing time of the project.
• It helps in detecting bugs early in the development stage that might cause much more damage to the system later.
• Reduces production time by allowing the front-end and back-end teams to work in parallel by eliminating dependencies between them.
• Automates manual tests and integrates them into the CI/CD pipeline.

Cons

• The number of requests is limited in the enterprise version.
• It is a difficult task to move a folder from one collection to another.

Keka

Keka is a Human Resource Management Software(HRMS) that solves daily basis issues in companies such as attendance management, automated payroll processing, and talent management.

Features

• Employee Database.
• Performance Management.
• Employee Profiles.
• Payroll Management.
• Recruitment Management.
• Time & Attendance Management.
• Compensation Management.
• Self-Service Portal.
• Timesheets.
• Leave Management.
• Employee Finances.
• Loans and Bonuses.

Pros

• Streamlines the workflow and enables your team to turn tedious tasks into more simple ones.
• Comes with a complete and customizable payroll system.
• Helps HR to find the right talent through modern applicant tracking systems.
• Provides functionalities such as continuous feedback, reviews, and goal management.

Cons

• Difficult navigation through the payroll information.
• Customer service is not satisfactory

Rollbar

Rollbar helps the developers to identify, prioritize, and resolve code errors and hence deploy better software.

Features

• Provides the feature of Deployment integrations which makes it easier to know which deployment introduced the bug.
• Debugging.
• Proactive customer support that notifies you of any unnoticeable errors.

Pros

• Easy setup.
• Very advanced querying capabilities.
• The telemetry feature is quite powerful.
• Integration with git and slack with a native experience.

Cons

• Limited options for filtering slack notifications.
• Automatic grouping doesn’t work satisfactorily well.

Datadog

Datadog is a monitoring platform for cloud-based applications. It brings together data from various sources such as databases, containers, servers, and third-party services to make your stack entirely observable. These features help DevOps teams avoid downtime, quickly resolve performance issues, and ensure customers are getting the best user experience.

Features

• Provides visibility on application performance for enterprises.
• It helps users in creating effective strategies for improving their services, tools, and apps.
• Provides team collaboration tools.
• Provides alert notifications.

Pros

• It allows seamless workflow irrespective of the platform, language, and geographical positions by pre-integrating with third-party apps.
• Can trace requests automatically across several libraries and frameworks.
• It provides an easy-to-use search tool.
• Offers an integrated view of the programs and services.

Cons

• Limited analytics and reports.
• A good amount of work is needed upfront to configure and install across your entire software or application stack.
• Steep learning curve.c

Mixpanel

Mixpanel is user-behavior-centric and analytic for both mobile and web users. It offers analytics and insights on user interaction with online products. Mixpanel is an event-based tracking tool that helps in increasing user engagement and conversions.

Features

• Users’ website actions are focused and analyzed.
• A simple and easy-to-use user interface that makes it easy to understand and analyze how people engage with your app.

Pros

• Robust event-based analytics.
• It has flexible plans that work for smaller startups as well.

Cons

• Customer support responds slowly.
• A steep learning curve.
• The platform security is not that great and needs some work.
• It cannot integrate with other data sources that well.

Amazon Web Services(AWS)

AWS is a cloud-computing platform that provides infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and packaged software as a service (SaaS) offerings. It offers a free tier usage with limited resources and features for customers to try AWS for free.

Features

• Host dynamic websites on the cloud.
• Computing power, database storage, content delivery.
• Comprehensive security capabilities.
• Multiple languages are supported.

Pros

• Excellent tools for machine learning and artificial intelligence.
• Good online tutorials and documentation.
• Highly reliable and fault-tolerant.
• Very scalable with a few clicks upgrade and downgrade.

Cons

• Due to the large number of services offered, it can be confusing for beginners.
• It can create a huge pile of bills if not managed and monitored properly.
• The initial setup is time-consuming.

FortiClient

FortiClient is an important part of Fortinet Security Fabric. It connects endpoints with Security Fabric and delivers endpoint compliance control, visibility, automation, and vulnerability management.

Features

• It can be used as a VPN Client, AV client, and host of vulnerability scanners.
• Integrated firewall, VPN, and vulnerability detection.
• Identify and remediate vulnerable or compromised hosts across your attack surface.

Pros

• Real-time protection against malicious websites and malware.
• It is easy to set up on Windows 10.
• Provides secure remote access with built-in VPN, single-sign-on, and two-factor authentication for added security.

Cons

• It works on Windows and Mac, but there’s no Linux version.
• No alerts show up when issues are detected.
• No automatic update feature.

Loco

Localise.biz (aka Loco) is an online translation management service.

Features

• Allows managing statuses for assets.
• Offers both free and paid subscriptions according to the needs and the size of the project.
• Import and export translations in a variety of different file formats.
• Tools for tracking progress and assigning tasks to other team members.
• Built-in WordPress translation editor.
• Allows for direct creation of language translation files into your theme or plugin.

Pros

• Filtering translations based on their status simplifies the work.
• The dashboard offers a convenient user interface for translating texts.
• Offers localization tools for extracting strings and generating templates.

Cons

• You’ll have to upgrade to the paid version if you want better functionalities.

Conclusion

This brings to an end of our two-blogs series best developer tools out there. The development process has changed extensively and will continue to do so at a rapid pace. The tools we discussed in this series help developers to keep their focus on the major tasks like logic building etc. and let these tools help in the other processes of development which not to mention are equally important for the success of software.

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You can also checkout my other article on Developer Tools series — Dev Tools to the Rescue — Part 1