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Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?

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Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?

#101

Post by BeetleB »

Think of all the dev tools you use (debugging, code navigation, etc). Then pick a literate programming system (e.g. org mode with Babel). How many of those dev tools can you use? In my experience: Almost none.

A trivial example: Running the tangled code, and getting errors. I know the error is in line 1234, but how do I map that line number to the line in some particular code block?

This is the primary thing holding me back from serious literate programming. Plenty of opportunities here.

The other thing I want (which I'm sure someone has solved): Having "orthogonal" repositories within a repository: Say I clone a Git repository. I want to now store some personal files in those directories (notes, config files for linting tools only I use, etc). I want these version controlled locally, but they should never be pushed to remote.

Another one: Get me ways to read tool/framework/language docs as Info files, so I can view them offline and via Emacs. Sphinx based docs can be built with a texinfo target.[1] Find some other tool that generates docs and add a texinfo target to it if it doesn't exist.

[1] Although it has warts.

Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?

#102

Post by flohofwoe »

nsm wrote: post #96
flohofwoe wrote: post #95

A truly "next generation debugger" as replacement for gdb, lldb and the MSVC debugger which allows me to watch my program working in realtime (and pause/step/rewind at any time). Visualization should include things like a memory-read/write/execute heatmaps, a realtime flame-graph profiler, a data structure browser which "knows" the entire program state, and a much tighter integration of such a debugger into the regul…

Building something like this to work with existing code in compiled languages is REALLY HARD. However, take a look at rr and Pernos.co.

Yep, I'm aware of both projects, also RemedyBG is a step in the right direction.

I agree it's hard, but it's been hard for the last 3 decades, but not much has happened (with the exception of time travel debugging).

I think debugging tools are just not deemed important enough by many programmers, which is a bit of a shame. Also they require support from compilers, operating systems, and hardware, and this level of integration is hard to achieve - maybe Apple could do it if they had any interest in good debugging tools.

Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?

#103

Post by pdimitar »

Diris wrote: post #100
pdimitar wrote: post #80

CLI / TUI parsers and analyzers of code. Let's not compartmentalize those into super-complex graphical IDEs. I'd like to be able to do e.g. `$TOOL functions path/to/module.rs` and get a flat list with only names or full function signatures (configurable by CLI switches). I'd also like to have some pre-baked analyzers e.g. find all controllers in Rails / Phoenix / Laravel / ActixWeb projects. Or all views, templates,…

I could see 1 and 3 not being too hard to build using treesitter[0] Too bad, I don't have time to build it [0] https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter

Yep I know, there are various CLI LSP tools and then you have awesome tools like `rust-analyzer`.

What I am lacking is a complete tool you can command to do specific isolated actions.

Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?

#104

Post by activitypea »

BeetleB wrote: post #101

Think of all the dev tools you use (debugging, code navigation, etc). Then pick a literate programming system (e.g. org mode with Babel). How many of those dev tools can you use? In my experience: Almost none. A trivial example: Running the tangled code, and getting errors. I know the error is in line 1234, but how do I map that line number to the line in some particular code block? This is the primary thing holding…

Oh dear, that last one. The number of times I wanted git to ignore specific changes I've made in config/top level files locally...

Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?

#105

Post by Frotag »

flohofwoe wrote: post #95

A truly "next generation debugger" as replacement for gdb, lldb and the MSVC debugger which allows me to watch my program working in realtime (and pause/step/rewind at any time). Visualization should include things like a memory-read/write/execute heatmaps, a realtime flame-graph profiler, a data structure browser which "knows" the entire program state, and a much tighter integration of such a debugger into the regul…

This is called time travel debugging right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel_debugging

Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?

#106

Post by flohofwoe »

Frotag wrote: post #105
flohofwoe wrote: post #95

A truly "next generation debugger" as replacement for gdb, lldb and the MSVC debugger which allows me to watch my program working in realtime (and pause/step/rewind at any time). Visualization should include things like a memory-read/write/execute heatmaps, a realtime flame-graph profiler, a data structure browser which "knows" the entire program state, and a much tighter integration of such a debugger into the regul…

This is called time travel debugging right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel_debugging

It's one step in the right direction, but as far as I'm aware it's still too awkward to use (e.g. AFAIK it requires a separate recording and debugging session), ideally I should just be able to hit the "Run" button in my IDE, and have "time slider controls" which allow me to pause and rewind on the fly, while seeing the visualized program state update.

Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?

#107

Post by aitchnyu »

I want a code hosting service that deploys a Dockerfile to both a web app/api and a queue/cronjob using http endpoints. I can attach Postgres databases (fork, restore), caches, file hosting, static files, email to the web app/apis. It should scale to zero (in bill too) if a request/job is not running and autoscale. It should alert me of performance issues and errors. It should also have a domain manager so it can map to our domains or have a custom myservice.myuser.hostingservice.com with HTTPS, WAF, CDN. Currently I have to set them all manually in Google Cloud Run. Render and Fly.io are also progressing.

Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?

#108

Post by jameshart »

65 wrote: post #73

JSX templating engine for Node. This isn't necessarily all that difficult to make since Babel can already transform JSX for you. I just want to use JSX as only a templating engine, not with React. I'd use it with Express and Alpine.

This is fully supported - you can substitute your own JSX runtime implementation for React's, either in your @babel/plugin-transform-react-jsx config (specify the 'importSource' directive) or on a per-JSX-file basis using @pragma.

Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?

#109

Post by dingleberry420 »

jiehong wrote: post #22

Find a way with entr[0] and an http server to tell the browser to reload the currently viewed file if it changes. Today, entr allows you to restart a command when a file changes. A web server allows you to serve local files to your browser. If you use npm, lots of libs allow you to serve your web ui, and make the browser reload the page when something has changed. But this is tied to npm, and even to the framework yo…

http://livereload.com/

https://www.npmjs.com/package/livereload

https://github.com/guard/guard-livereload

if you search for livereload + whatever framework/language you use, you will probably find an implementation that integrates nicely. but the cli works just fine for anything, really.

Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?

#110

Post by mfrischknecht »

nikita2206 wrote: post #25
hendry wrote: post #3

Log viewer that can prettify JSON structured objects. And for example if you clicked on level = error it can quickly filter all error logs.

While others are replying with ‘this or that already does this’, I totally feel you. All the log viewers I’ve worked with (latest ones being DataSet and Kibana) have some holes in their UX. When that compounds with badly configured log pipeline it’s really painful.

I think I have a prototype you might be interested in, but I´d like to manage expectations first :)

  - It isn´t finished
  - The code is a mess (and not available online)
  - The UX clearly needs work 
  - etc. etc. :)
...but I started a thing with basically exactly the same gripes as you two. The only difference: Actually, I don't think collapsing JSON is nearly enough. I want pretty printers (like in GDB) I can rewrite on the fly.

So, if you're willing to plunge head-first into cold water without proper documentation, have a look at: https://run.pickaroon.app

Keep in mind that I wrote this to scratch my own itch and will change it further as time allows. On the upside, I've been using it for my own dives through logs quite successfully already.

I also started a manual-ish readme that also isn´t public yet. It's written in markdown, so I'll have to look into how easy I can throw it onto my server or not. I might just make a separate GitHub repo for the time being.

Edit: I went with the GitHub route. You can find the current iteration of the readme here: https://pickaroon.github.io/readme/

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