Week 2 and what about my favorite tools to improve me as a developer, well let's dig into it
Define what a good tool is
A tool is a "thing" that is solving a problem, it can be an object, a method, a learning place, a specific environment, or a set of information that makes you capable of solving your initial problem.
The best tool accessibility is a tool in English, free, and shared by the community to be widely spread. And having a community carrying the evolution of the tool by adding new features (if open-source), creating tutorials, and hackathons.
The dark side of an overloaded toolbox
- having too many tools
- having tools that have a large scope/range of usage
- having tools that are difficult to learn and use
- not accessible / not shareable / English only
Tools category
Methods
- learning websites such as Udemy, Coursera, Open classroom, etc.
- memory tools such as mind-mapping and Anki
- working methods like agile scrum.
Practicing environment
- local environment you need to install (NodeJS and JDK for example)
- serverless environment to deploy in production (Netlify or Vercel)
- playground (JSFiddle or Stackblitz)
Information
- documentation with devdocs.io
- guide, tutorials, and hackathon
- roadmaps with roadmap.sh
- cheatsheet with devhints
Tools nature
Online
Mostly need the internet to access it or it's a simple web app tool. It often replaces a real book or a pen & paper board.
Offline
- hardware to improve your working sessions (computer / big screen / nice Secretlab chair)
- university courses / books
- pen & papers / drawing
Community
There are the best places to find a community
- StackOverflow
- Youtube (Grafikart & Moralis)
- Blogs (Hashnode and Devto)
- Feedly (RSS)
Skills to be improved
My shortlist skill categories that I would like to improve as a developer
- Writing clean code
- Architecture and design pattern
- Testing
- CI/CD
- Main concept (SOLID, ACID, etc)
- API
- Security
- Lastest techno
My list of tools
Example of tools I can use
Usage
Daily used tools when coding
- Browser extension: daily.dev
Tools I use in my workflow when I am building
- IDE: Visual Studio Code
- Versioning: GitKraken
Tools I want to integrate into my workflow
- Miro: mind-mapping
Most helpful online tools to self-improve as a developer
If I had to choose one tool to keep and throw the others, I would like to introduce you daily.dev chrome extension.
It is a browser extension that replaces your new tab background to display a list of articles written by the community or a specialized blog about a ton of topics. You can create your own feed to sort by topics you prefer such as AI, big data, and blockchain. You can discover the popular articles or the most upvoted ones if you are looking for something new. You can track your top tags reading and monitor your weekly goal.
This tool helps me to keep an eye on every topic I mentioned earlier such as tech news, methods, algo, framework, conferences, and hackathons.
You can also generate a Dev Card just like a Pokemon trainer card. This is mine and I encourage you to start your journey with daily.dev extension !
