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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?

#161
post #156

At times, I have wanted a text editor that uses a "scroll and zoom" interface for navigating a single, long file. The minimap idea is similar, but I want it fully integrated into the main view. I'm not sure how useful this would be, but I'd like to try it.

I love that idea, some kind of Google maps for code where (0,0) is your main would take out a lot of pain when onboarding into large and poorly documented codebases.

Yeah, that is exactly the situation I was in when I really wanted it.

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

#162

I don't know if this exists or not, but it's something I've always wanted. I love and hate unit testing. It's a fantastic idea that I've never seen successfully implemented in practice, mostly because the tests invariably fall by the wayside. At the very least, it's a burden to support them. I'd love a tool that would observe my code during runtime - capturing all inputs and outputs from every function, as well as th…

Yeah I want this too. Jest Snapshots are great for quickly saving the expected output and asserting that it doesn’t deviate, but it would be nice to have the same sort of “snapshot” of inputs as well.

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

#163
post #53

All the tools I want to see already exist. The big problem I have is that I can never perfectly configure IDEs or any other tools to work with my project unless y project is exceedingly simple. Let me give you just one example. VSCode + Python has a little tool for integrating with unittest/pytest. It’s pretty neat. There’s a little GUI where you can run your tests in the left panel. But what if it’s a Django project…

I feel your pain. I love vs code but sometimes I miss classic visual studio. I know it still exists but vs code is awesome for better or worse. the problem is it aims to be the swiss knife of development environments, everything is extensible and sometimes it's overly complex rather than simplifying. they need to rework their extension store imo. not sure what but feel like unfulfilled potential.

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

#164
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…

many projects allow web reload, see python httpwatcher for example.

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

#165
Would like to see a FLOSS IDE good enough to wrest mindshare back from vscode. A competitive stronghold that shouldn't be dominated by BigTech and telemetry.

Wishlist: should be very responsive, powerful, and reasonably easy to use. CUA keybindings, no unique interfaces. All intelligent functions running in low priority background threads/workers so the main window is snappy as hell.

Perhaps written in something like rust to improve geek credibility... but if you started with a popular option today and forked, that might be fine.

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

#166

An IDE that provides a linear view of your code base. Follow code paths as though they were all inline, e.g. expand views of function/method internals inside the calling function, etc. No more changing files/modules.

forever now I've been imagining a codebase as database, functions/expressions are entries and the IDE can query based on context, eg. filter by regex or other rules and filter differently when debug context available etc.

it should be transparent once you flatten the db to file(s) and run normally, but for IDE would need to be aware of this db structure. maybe a VS code extension might work!

that is the dream...

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

#167
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - A build system / package manager like Nix [1] but with a better user experience / more straightforward command-line tooling. Working on it :) > - A version control system which scales to petabytes or more. Something that I could put large video files in without thinking twice about it. Something a large company could use for their monorepo—or even their data warehouse. https://github.com/facebookexperimental/eden…

Did you write nixery?

Yes

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

#168
I would love to see another tool like the platinum tech inc "Repository" The tool would scan your C/C++, Fortran and Cobol code AND scan your databases and then allow you do to pretty sophisticated analysis. Such as "If I change the type of this column in my db where will it cascade down in to my code." They were eventually acquired by Computer Associates after I left the org but I've not run into a tool like it since.

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

#169

Multi language dataflow analysis to debug and communicate how data goes through a system. AI image to html/CSS. I hate fiddling with css keywords when I already know what I want it to look like.

AI to css hehe not a terrible idea. of course overkill compared to insert web builder here, but cool idea nonetheless.

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

#170

I don't know if this exists or not, but it's something I've always wanted. I love and hate unit testing. It's a fantastic idea that I've never seen successfully implemented in practice, mostly because the tests invariably fall by the wayside. At the very least, it's a burden to support them. I'd love a tool that would observe my code during runtime - capturing all inputs and outputs from every function, as well as th…

It doesn't check all your boxes, but have you tried Playwright? https://playwright.dev

I've looked at Playwright and it seems to be very close to what I want, but it's on the E2E side. I'm looking more for a unit testing variant of that idea.
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