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

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201–210 of 230 posts

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

#201

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,…

Such a tool exists. Check out https://hexawise.com/

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

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First: source maps. Second: have you tried creating another git repository inside a gitignored directory?

The files I need to track cannot be confined to a single directory. Some of them will coexist with source code files. Will look into source maps, but the principle applies to all aspects of literate programming. When editing a source block, linter tools go crazy because they see me use variables that to them appear to not have been assigned to (they were assigned to in other source code blocks).

That’s a pretty specific problem. So the linter cannot work on the context of a single file because the lexical scope is spread across multiple files without any kind of import/export or namespacing to dictate which files belong together? If so, then maybe the linter could read all files, cache the scope and partially invalidate it on each update to a file.

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

#203
I feel like this must exist and I just haven’t found it, but I’d love a tool that can automate seeding a staging/local db from production.

It would need live in a vpc to access the prod db, but then expose itself to access slices of anonymized data that can be used to restore external dbs.

Essentially a configurable pgdump that includes the ability to anonymize personal info, take recent slices of data, and serve the data all in a way that still protects direct access to the original data.

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

#204

I would love an IDE where I can create documentation formatted as tables, colors, graphics etc. directly in the source code comments. Also, I would like to show selected function or variable names in bold or larger fonts. Viz. Knuth Warp/Weft.

Lazydocs and mkdocs can take python docstrings and renders markdown into a documentation website. Given it's just a sphinc website, you could probably then also add plugins for mermaid, plantuml, etc.

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

#206
Yes! I actually have a specific app in mind that if I had the time/patience I would build. Better yet if you build it I will buy it!

The problem is this: in any given day as a developer I'm creating information in any of a dozen or more systems. Outlook (emails), Jira (tickets), Confluence (Wikis), Github (PRs), Slack (DMs and group messages), Notion (notes), IntelliJ, GDocs, etc.

All of these systems have a part of the story of how features/projects are developed, sustained, maintained, and altered.

All of these systems have their own search functions that vary widely in quality.

I want a desktop app that will allow me to search across ALL of my "developer" applications from a single pane.

In particular, I want "magic text" links to work in each app. For example, if I see TICKET-1234 then I want the app to know this text links to a particular Jira ticket.

Once you have this as a basic app you can turn it into a platform. This app could help me organize my day as a developer, and remind me of things I need to do.

I would eventually want this app to show me: * github activity and PRs I need to review (or let me set a reminder to review them later) * upcoming meetings * set a watch on particular repos, paths, or files to tell me if something has changed

I'm not concerned about this app having editing functionality. Having great search is the most important thing.

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

#208

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…

Are you aware of VSCodium ( https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium#readme ) and does it not meet your criteria because it's "dominated" by Microsoft? The rest of the terms such as "responsive," "easy to use", and "no unique interfaces" make your request hard to fulfill

Correct, should not be built by the first company in line to yield to the NSA while hungry for data. Also, ...

Re: hard, not at all, there are many responsive floss development tools already. They just need some extra polish, community building, and not be written in Java or Javascript, etc.

Probably needs some sponsorship to build mindshare, that seems the harder part. If too big a request (from scratch) one could start with an existing one and add plugins wrapping existing floss dev tools and language servers at a lower priority.

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

#209

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 ma…

>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.

Sounds kinda like Google Docs for devs

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

#210

Some kind of vulnerability tracker for dependencies. You type `gradle somecommand` and it will walk the dependency graph, incl all transient ones, and show you which dependencies currently have an active vulnerability affecting them and the version that fixes it.

snyk does exactly this. You can also integrate it with bitbucket so automatically make PRs with upgraded package versions.
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