Developer Tools

This post isn’t about Chrome Developer Tools (although you should totally read about them).

No, this post is about some developer tools I’ve found along the way, which I use to enhance my projects.

First, let’s start with some not-so-common tips that no one tells you about when you begin:

Things I’ve learned

It’s going to be tough. Embrace it.
Learn how to use the computer without a mouse. (Shameless self-plug: check out my other blog post about going mouse-free!)
Always use a linter and a code formatter for your own good. Don’t compromise!
Personally, I use black with Python, and prettier and eslint with JavaScript (and don’t forget to mix them up).
Comments aren’t always necessary. Use them with caution¹:
1. They aren’t read by the compiler or almost anyone, and
2. They get old.
Get rid of validation as soon as possible in your code, so you can get to your happy flow. Your happy flow is where everything is guaranteed to be good.
For example, I reviewed code that could return 200, then 438, then 200. This means that something is off and you should second-guess your initial assumptions.
Think through your abstractions—avoid leaky abstractions. For example, Ruby on Rails (along with some other web frameworks) implements a hack: it tries to route HEAD requests to the same place as it would route GET requests. Then it runs the controller code, and just omits the response body. This is one hell of a leaky abstraction—and it made one hell of a security headache over at GitHub.
Someone else thought about it before you. Use the open source community.
If you really can’t find what you’re looking for, build it—and maybe call it a startup!

A great Stack Overflow blog post about writing comments, and the mythical Code Tells You How, Comments Tell You Why. ↩