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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?

#191

Post by avg_dev »

ayewo wrote: post #118

A CLI tool that can be used to observe and act on the return code and/or output of any CLI tool on Linux. It should have a way to notify [1] the user after a long-running CLI program terminates on Linux. It would have similar semantics to the time utility. Let's call this tool timed . For instance, prefixing any task with the time utility e.g. "time dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb" would output the duration of the underly…

I was thinking hard about this and truth is I did write code to do it.

From the README.MD in my private repo:

> `ec` prints out the elapsed time and exit code of a command after running it.

But the thing is, Bash supports this natively, using `$?` and you can even put it in your `$PS1` so you see it for every command, or use a function: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Bash/Prompt_customization#V...

Still, I like my solution. It was fun to write. If you want access to the repo let me have an email address I can write you at, or a GitHub username, and I'll let you have a look. https://i.imgur.com/DUf9gDc.png

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

#192

Post by michaelmure »

Do you fancy re-thinking buf trackers? I'm looking for help over at https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug to create a distributed bug tracker embeded in git, with bridges.

It's close to be ready for prime time, yet there is so much that could be done to make it better.

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

#193

Post by xgt »

activitypea wrote: post #112

Keyboard-focused text editors. Reaching for the mouse pointer is super annoying, unless I'm using an undocked macbook (which itself is an ergonomics nightmare). Emacs and Vim are fine enough, but both are old software with plenty of baggage. I don't find Vim's mnemonics comfy or intuitive, and Emacs' performance is abysmal by text editor standards. I believe more competition in the space, especially from big players,…

There is also terminal based Helix: "Helix's editing model is strongly inspired from vim and kakoune, and a notable difference from vim (and the most striking similarity to kakoune) is that Helix follows the selection → action model."

https://helix-editor.com/

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

#194

Post by LouisSayers »

Working in a team I think it'd be awesome to see when other people are editing the same files in a project- which could help spark conversation and avoid merge conflicts.

A more advanced "Find usages" in IDEs that could perhaps create a graph and show more than just one level deep, or where you can track a function's argument to see where it originated and where it travelled through to get to a function.

A project management tool that could help with covering different scenarios - like a tree of possibilities, and allow you to select which possibilities a card must cater for, the ranges of arguments etc.

A GUI Devops tool for creating infrastructure as code (E.g. for pulumi scripts).

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

#195

Post by RileyJames »

Hackbraten wrote: post #20

Remember the early web, when people used to look at existing websites to learn how it was done? “View Source” used to be a career-starter for a lot of people, but has become largely useless today due to transpilation, frameworks, and other abstraction layers. I’d love to see a browser extension provide an “Explain Source” context menu item, which sends you to a pane in Developer Tools that shows: - an estimation whic…

Another couple of tools that are useful for analysing apps/products that heavily utilise js.

- webpack bundle analyser

Use it to determine what’s in the bundle. Can give you insight into tools, APIs and other dependencies.

- shuji

Used to decompile minified js. Effectively you can read the bundle, see the directory structure. Perfect tool for learning.

[1] https://openbase.com/js/webpack-bundle-analyzer

[2] https://openbase.com/js/shuji

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

#196

Post by atomkirk »

stepchowfun wrote: post #31

- A build system / package manager like Nix [1] but with a better user experience / more straightforward command-line tooling. - A dependently typed programming language like Coq [2] (or Agda, Idris, Lean, etc.) that is sufficiently approachable to gain enough mindshare that companies start adopting it for mission-critical work. - A version control system which scales to petabytes or more. Something that I could put…

Whats awesome about nix? I struggle to grasp why is better than docker

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

#197

Post by guitarike »

A tool that lets non software developers manage data-driven tests. I've been in many work situations over the years where the product manager / business stakeholder wants to test something (it could be an API endpoint, or even sometimes just a method or algorithm). From a developer perspective, it's the same code running every time, just with different inputs, and asserting different outputs. From the business side, each test is a different use case that they need to test (and some are more critical than others).

I have just done data-driven tests (i.e. put their inputs/outputs into a data structure and have my testing framework loop through them). But I hate having to sit and copy/paste their inputs/outputs every time they think of a new use case. I'd love a UI driven tool where they can manage all the tests like in a spreadsheet, and when they make updates, my regression tests picks up their tests automatically. Would be nice if it even gave them reports based on what they want to see (e.g. organizing the tests by category, or by severity).

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

#198

Post by xk3 »

stepchowfun wrote: post #31

- A build system / package manager like Nix [1] but with a better user experience / more straightforward command-line tooling. - A dependently typed programming language like Coq [2] (or Agda, Idris, Lean, etc.) that is sufficiently approachable to gain enough mindshare that companies start adopting it for mission-critical work. - A version control system which scales to petabytes or more. Something that I could put…

> A version control system which scales to petabytes or more

Git Annex might work here

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

#199

Post by naltun »

Hackbraten wrote: post #20

Remember the early web, when people used to look at existing websites to learn how it was done? “View Source” used to be a career-starter for a lot of people, but has become largely useless today due to transpilation, frameworks, and other abstraction layers. I’d love to see a browser extension provide an “Explain Source” context menu item, which sends you to a pane in Developer Tools that shows: - an estimation whic…

> when people used to look at existing websites to learn how it was done?

I actually forgot we used to do this. I miss the early web.

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