Software Engineer Tools I Can’t Live Without

Below are tools that I use on a daily basis that my life as a software engineer easier.

Photo by Eugen Str on Unsplash

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: A quick way to make UML diagrams using a markup language rather than a drag and drop interface. Best part is, it integrates with Boostnote. You can easily run plantUML on your own machine with docker using the following command.

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 plantuml/plantuml-server:jetty

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.

Docker: If you are creating software but not using docker, why?

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.

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.

Organization

Boostnote: A solid developer-centric note taking app. Did I mention it has PlantUML integration?

Todoist: This tool basically runs my life todo list every day. If a task doesn’t make its way to Todoist, it most likely won’t get done.

Feedly: If you’re like me you follow a ton of blogs. Feedly aggregates all of these blogs into a single location.