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Top Developer Tools of 2016

stackshare.io

21–30 of 72 posts

Re: Top Developer Tools of 2016

#21
post #8

The #1 new tool of the year is a library for adding chat to a project. Why is chat being added to so many things? Every time I use Evernote and see the chat button, I wonder if anybody is actually chatting in Evernote and if they are, why?

Absolutely 100%. The only time I ever call a company for support is when they don't have chat. My company provides both chat and phone support to our customers (many of whom aren't technically savvy) and chat is overwhelmingly more used. Support staff can also handle more throughput with chat since you can easily have 5 simultaneous conversations at a time.

Outside of analytics, real time chat is almost always the first non-core feature I ever add to a new project.

Re: Top Developer Tools of 2016

#22

Surprised Visual Studio Code didn't get a mention in the text editor section.

Actually, the reason Visual Studio Code didn't make these rankings is because the stackshare page wasn't created until mid-2016. Since the rankings were heavily weighted to tech stack inclusion, VSC's numbers were a bit skewed. We do our best to keep up with requests to add tools, but as you could imagine there are _a lot_ of requests.

Re: Top Developer Tools of 2016

#23
post #19

JavaScript, Python, PHP, and HTML are developer tools? (yes, they're listed in four of the top ten spaces of Application & Data Tool of the Year) Isn't that like saying the #1 business tool is "The English Language"? I guess I expected a list of things people use like this one (which is phenomenal): "Scott Hanselman's 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows" http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHa…

Yeah you can call the language a tool, since most languages can get the same job done but some do certain jobs better.

JavaScript has consistently beaten out any other language as the client-side language of choice in both my personal and professional projects. Clearly, it deserves the top spot.

Re: Top Developer Tools of 2016

#25

JavaScript, Python, PHP, and HTML are developer tools? (yes, they're listed in four of the top ten spaces of Application & Data Tool of the Year) Isn't that like saying the #1 business tool is "The English Language"? I guess I expected a list of things people use like this one (which is phenomenal): "Scott Hanselman's 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows" http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHa…

The results are in, folks, and The NUMBER ONE programming tool of the year IS:

The general purpose computer! Let's hear a round of applause!

The article reads like an ad for a bunch of commercial services. I was really hoping for things I could apt-get/brew install .

Re: Top Developer Tools of 2016

#26

I'm genuinely curious what the value of stackshare is. Is it a form of "infotainment"? It seems to me that if you work as a developer professionally, you'll have a good sense of what tools and stacks are out there based both on colleagues/work and the larger developer community you likely interact with. How does it help me to see that some well-known software is popular? It seems like just encourages more trend-follo…

I personally use it to keep up with new tools that companies might use or are becoming popular (always good to have an eye to know what's up).

I don't use it when I want to start a project and I'm looking for tools.

This is a keep at the back of your head kinda thing.

Re: Top Developer Tools of 2016

#27
post #20
post #6

Great list, wrong name, should be something like "top 50 _web_ developer tools. Not much in there for desktop app developers.

Since we aggregated data across all users, our "web" tools definitely shone through (as you might imagine, there are more web devs than native on stackshare), but given that we included all tools we felt it was more accurate as a description of the methodology. Do you think it would be valuable for us to segment these rankings further next time? Create a couple different rankings?

Sure. It's not so much about splitting it up, though. It's about providing a title that will attract the correct audience. But good luck getting that past marketing.

Re: Top Developer Tools of 2016

#28
post #21
post #8

The #1 new tool of the year is a library for adding chat to a project. Why is chat being added to so many things? Every time I use Evernote and see the chat button, I wonder if anybody is actually chatting in Evernote and if they are, why?

Absolutely 100%. The only time I ever call a company for support is when they don't have chat. My company provides both chat and phone support to our customers (many of whom aren't technically savvy) and chat is overwhelmingly more used. Support staff can also handle more throughput with chat since you can easily have 5 simultaneous conversations at a time. Outside of analytics, real time chat is almost always the fi…

OP is talking about chat as a feature in a product. You're talking about something completely different - customer support chat.

Re: Top Developer Tools of 2016

#29

JavaScript, Python, PHP, and HTML are developer tools? (yes, they're listed in four of the top ten spaces of Application & Data Tool of the Year) Isn't that like saying the #1 business tool is "The English Language"? I guess I expected a list of things people use like this one (which is phenomenal): "Scott Hanselman's 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows" http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHa…

> Isn't that like saying the #1 business tool is "The English Language"?

This. Love it! Exactly my thoughts on seeing the click-baity OP.

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