Top 5 productivity tools for developers

Today, it’s about being more productive and proactive. With the digital era comes a multitude of distractions that hinder us from getting shit done. Emails, social media tags, funny YouTube clips, WhatsApp messages are there at all times.

As a developer, your ability to focus is key to keep coding for the various client projects. Productivity tools will help you track your projects as well as the time you spend working on them. Ultimately, they make you optimize your tasks and be more organized.

These are a list of tools that are beyond resourceful to any developer.

Task management tool

1. Trello

Trello is an easy-to-use task management tool based on light-weight Kanban boards. You can easily create boards, enter the jobs, and indicate the due dates. Also, you can have columns that show the to-do list, work-in-progress, and the completed tasks. The boards can be moved around easily.

Here at Filestar, we have been using this job tracking tool and we love it! Being transparent fans, all our activities are posted on Trello for efficient communication and collaboration. The cool background colors, tags, and labels kick the boredom out.

The main features include:

· Drag & drop task editor.

· Group and personal assignment posts.

· Communication through comments.

· App integrations including Dropbox and Google Drive.

· Availability of progress meter checklist and voting options.

Communication tool

2. Slack

Slack is one of the most popular collaborations and communication tools. With Slack, you can confidently say bye, bye to emails. It gives you a platform to communicate with your team as if you are face-to-face. The user interface is intuitive and lets you view and reply to several conversations. The major plus is that you can have it on your smartphone so you can get notifications even if you aren’t online.

Slack has worked perfectly to meet our team’s objectives. If anyone needs immediate help on their dev projects, Slack is the place to get fast assistance. It’s helped us keep the communication going with our remote team.

Some of the most useful features:

· Create organized communication channels.

· Integration with Google Drive, Dribble, Trello, Asana, Github, among others.

· You can make voice and video calls.

File conversion and management tool

3. Filestar

Filestar is an easy-to-use application that supports over 30000 file conversions. Time is a critical resource to a programmer and you can’t afford to waste it on the frustrations of files you can’t open. You don’t have to keep downloading software to access these files. Filestar has you covered. You can easily convert any file to the format that is compatible with your device or programs.

For developers, Filestar increases your project efficiency by providing smart automated solutions. Some of the main functions to developers include:

· Developer file conversion efficiency. You can easily convert one file format to another e.g. JSON to Html or XML.

· Database management.

· PDF file manipulations.

· Image, video, and audio file manipulation.

Sharing tool

4. Notion

Notion is a cloud-based one-stop-shop for note-taking, collaboration, and schedule planning. It integrates your tasks into databases and wikis. You have templates, tables, topics, and browser extensions that help you organize your work in a cool design.

The ability to share project information with clients is what makes this app sassy. You can hide what you don’t want them to see but it’s one dapper tool to keep your clients informed on your progress.

It’s most useful features include:

· Real-time collaboration.

· Database and Spreadsheets.

· Calendar and Kanban boards for task management.

Special developer tool

5. The Silver Searcher

This is a free code-searching tool that began as a duplicate of Ack. It is commonly called Ag and it’s 5-10x faster than Ack and more developed. It will give you more specific matches for your problem saving you time. It’s available for Windows, Linux, Mac, and BSD.

Some of its useful features include:

· You can ignore files in your source repo that you don’t want to search for.

· All keys are available on the home row.

· Command name used is 33% shorter than that of Ack.