One of the most important lessons you'll learn as a developer is to work smarter, not harder, and one of the best ways to live by that rule is to use programs that make you more productive and simplify your life. In this text, you will see 7 different programs, which you may or may not have heard of or use.
The programs that will be discussed are very useful for developers who are involved in the entire creation process and are mostly used by web developers, i.e. web designers.
The first program is BundlePhobia. It is a web application that allows you to specify how much NPM package will be added to the total bundle package. If you're working with modern frontend technologies, you want the bundle package to be as small as possible so that the site's home page loads are optimized. BundlePhobia easily analyzes your project, you need to enter the name of the bundle and it will tell you how much the bundle is, the download time and many other information for each version of the bundle.
The second program is CloudCraft. It's a web application that will help you design and budget for your cloud infrastructure. Currently only available for AWS, although often only GCP is used, it is a useful application as it provides a very intuitive drag-and-drop interface that allows connecting different cloud infrastructures. Not only is this great for planning, but it's also great for budgeting, because when you have all the infrastructure in one place, you can see the estimated value of the budget.
The third program is Figma. It is probably the most famous program from this list, it is very similar to Adobe Illustrator and Sketch. Figma is a graphic design program, there is a desktop and web version of the program that provide the same functions and it is completely free. Since it has a web version, you can open your projects from any computer by simply logging into your account. Also, if you are an application developer, you can export your styles as CSS or as Android or iOS styles.
The fourth program is Fontflipper. This app is built using angular and firebase and its sole purpose is to help you choose fonts for your design. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of fonts on Google, and it's pretty boring to go through each one until you figure out which one works for you. Fontflipper allows you to input your own graphics and then experiment with fonts and simply choose what you like by swiping fonts left if you don't like them and right if you like them. Once you've decided which fonts you like, you can download them directly from Google.
The fifth program is a Google Chrome extension VisBug. It is a program that allows you to visually interact with your site. The page can be styled live on the browser, page elements can be moved, their styles can be changed. You don't have to write new CSS code yourself, you just copy it from the inspector and paste it.
It's the sixth program Insomnia. It is most useful for back-end developers, used for API debugging. Whether you're building a REST API or a graphical QL API, this app will help you keep your entire workflow organized. It also allows you to save reusable values, so you can go back and debug your API again, because you don't want to waste your time rewriting boring HTTP requests every day, and Insomnia has a well laid out user interface.
It's the seventh program Flare. Another design program, it is used to create 2D vector animations, it is similar to Figma in that it is used for graphics, but in Flare you can also see the design change over time, as which designer changed something. Flare is an open design program, which allows you to see the work of all other designers on the site and learn from others.
Source: youtube
