Silicon Valley is famous for many things, but one of the most important is its culture of innovation. It’s no coincidence that some of the world’s most successful businesses have headquarters here—from Google and Facebook to Uber and Airbnb. The reason why these companies succeed? They have a competitive advantage in the form of great developers. As a developer, having the right tools in your arsenal is essential. The following list contains five essential tools every developer needs in their arsenal.
1. Docker
Docker is a container platform that allows you to package an application with all its dependencies into a standardized unit for software development. This makes it easier to run the same code on different machines and ensures that it will run in harmony with other applications.
Docker is essential for every developer because it allows them to create consistent environments. This makes troubleshooting problems and testing new features easier without worrying about the underlying operating system or libraries.
It’s also great for developing and testing locally because you can set up your environment once and easily recreate it on another machine using Docker images.
There are multiple providers like JFrog, Google, and Microsoft that offer Docker images. You can use these to create your images, which can be used locally or shared with others.
2. Kubernetes
Kubernetes is an open-source system for automating containerized applications’ deployment, scaling, and management. It groups containers that make up an application into logical units for easy management and discovery. Kubernetes builds upon a decade of experience running production workloads at Google, combined with best-of-breed ideas from the community.
Kubernetes runs on all major operating systems — Linux, Windows Server 2016+ (and older), macOS 10.14+ (and older) — as well as on virtual machines such as VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V; it also runs on bare metal clouds such as Google Cloud Platform/GKE, Amazon Web Services/EC2 Container Service (ECS), Microsoft Azure Container Service (AKS), IBM Cloud Private 2.0 or OpenShift Dedicated 2 .0.
Kubernetes has been designed to work with cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, as well as on-premises data centers running VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V.
Demand for Kubernetes has spiked as companies look to simplify their IT operations and move more workloads into the cloud. In addition, Kubernetes has also been adopted by many developers when developing containerized applications.
3. GitHub
GitHub is a web-based hosting service for version control using Git. Unlike other collaboration services, it offers both commercial and free accounts. It also has a vast community of users who can contribute to projects, so you don’t need to worry about getting lost in the woods when it comes time to find help with your coding project.
GitHub is the most prominent open-source host in the world, so if anyone has heard of something like it before, they probably know what it is used for (and its benefits). In other words, this tool can be helpful for you as a developer and for having conversations with others around you who might not know anything about programming or development tools!
4. VS Code
VS Code is a great code editor that’s lightweight, fast, and works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It has excellent support for JavaScript and TypeScript out of the box. There are also built-in debugging tools that help you write efficient code by showing errors as soon as they occur. If you’re using a Git repository, VS Code has built-in support.
The best part about VS Code? It’s not just a fantastic code editor—it also has a large community of extensions! There are over 1 million extensions listed on their marketplace right now!
5. Gradle
Gradle is a build automation tool that can automate the build, testing, publishing, and deployment of software packages or other projects, such as generated static websites, Android apps, and even iOS apps.
Gradle’s features include:
- A rich plugin ecosystem that provides many ways to extend Gradle’s core functionality by adding new tasks, settings, and properties.
- Support for all major operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
- A robust architecture allows Gradle to be used in small-scale personal projects and enterprise environments with thousands of users in a single organization.
Conclusion
We hope this blog post has given you a better understanding of the tools every developer needs in their arsenal. Using these tools regularly and mastering them can improve your workflow and productivity and become more efficient overall.