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.
Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?
71–80 of 230 posts
Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?
#72I 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…
Not sure this would be great for new code, because the tests are supposed to dictate the function’s behaviour, and not the other way around. Yet, this would be amazing for legacy projects with no unit tests: you could record the code in production, and generate unit tests from there, and add them to the non-tested project. It would bring you a safety net allowing you to better work on that legacy project IMO. This ac…
One thing I found useful with Trompeloeil was the tracer. You instantiate a tracer, and then every call made into a mocked object is logged for you. Really make it easy to see how a mysterious controller operates on the thing you are mocking.
Plus, the very act of engineering in a dependency injection for the mock if not already provided, enforces a testable interface.
Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?
#73JSX 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.
Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?
#74TL;DR: highlight tailwind / bootstrap classes in VS Code. Web Dev is only a distant area of expertise of mine. I find learning new things here not complicated, but a bit tedious. What I'd like is to be able to scan through html files faster. And what hinders me the most, in terms of reading others' code now, is figuring which html classes are custom-declared, and which belong to a design framework, like bootstrap or…
You can use the Tailwind CSS IntelliSense VSCode extension for this.
Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?
#75Git alternative that works with GitHub but isn't git
Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?
#76Remember 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…
There is https://www.wappalyzer.com/ which does most of what you are looking for.
I use the wappalyzer chrome extension almost everyday when I'm browsing the web, pretty useful at getting a highlevel view of the tech used
Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?
#773D graphics especially interactive interfaces is still far too complicated, presently needing to be build over layer upon layer of libraries and toolkits. I think a simpler approach will be a good thing to have for developers.
Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?
#78I 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…
A tool similar to what you want. It generates input/output pairs from the code, aiming to maximize coverage, and allows you to convert them to unit tests with one click.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/test/generate-...
Also known as its legacy / research project name, "Pex". The underlying algorithm technique is called "dynamic symbolic execution".
There was also similar tool for Java called "Agitar Agitator".
Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?
#79I 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…
I experimented with this idea in PHP by capturing profiles and traces.
It's an interesting idea for sure!
Re: Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?
#80CLI / 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, etc.
Furthermore, CLI/TUI refactoring please! I want to rename a function, or a module, or even just a local function variable, let me do it!
In general: tooling for massaging source. We need much more of that.