Ask HN: What developer tools would you like to see?

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

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Nutrient – The #1 PDF SDK Library, trusted by 10K+ developers
Other PDF SDKs promise a lot - then break. Laggy scrolling, poor mobile UX, tons of bugs, and lack of support cost you endless frustrations. Nutrient’s SDK handles billion-page workloads - so you don’t have to debug PDFs. Used by ~1 billion end users in more than 150 different countries.
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  1. toast

    Containerize your development and continuous integration environments. 🥂 (by stepchowfun)

    - A build system like Nix [1] but with a better user experience / more straightforward command-line tooling.

    - A dependently typed programming language like Coq [2] (or Agda, Idris, Lean, etc.) that is sufficiently approachable to gain enough mindshare that companies start adopting it for mission-critical work.

    - A version control system which scales to petabytes or more. Something that I could put large video files in without thinking twice about it. Something a large company could use for their monorepo—or even their data warehouse.

    - A note-taking tool that allows me to organize notes in a graph with links between them (like a wiki), not as files and folders in a tree, which enforces the invariant that every note is transitively reachable from some "root" so I never lose a note.

    - Something like Toast [3] but which is also designed for running services in production, not just local development and continuous integration. A unified way to run code in dev, test, and prod environments. A new k8s.

    [1] https://nixos.org/

    [2] https://coq.inria.fr/

    [3] https://github.com/stepchowfun/toast (shameless plug)

  2. CodeRabbit

    CodeRabbit: AI Code Reviews for Developers. Revolutionize your code reviews with AI. CodeRabbit offers PR summaries, code walkthroughs, 1-click suggestions, and AST-based analysis. Boost productivity and code quality across all major languages with each PR.

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  3. nix

    Nix, the purely functional package manager

    - A build system like Nix [1] but with a better user experience / more straightforward command-line tooling.

    - A dependently typed programming language like Coq [2] (or Agda, Idris, Lean, etc.) that is sufficiently approachable to gain enough mindshare that companies start adopting it for mission-critical work.

    - A version control system which scales to petabytes or more. Something that I could put large video files in without thinking twice about it. Something a large company could use for their monorepo—or even their data warehouse.

    - A note-taking tool that allows me to organize notes in a graph with links between them (like a wiki), not as files and folders in a tree, which enforces the invariant that every note is transitively reachable from some "root" so I never lose a note.

    - Something like Toast [3] but which is also designed for running services in production, not just local development and continuous integration. A unified way to run code in dev, test, and prod environments. A new k8s.

    [1] https://nixos.org/

    [2] https://coq.inria.fr/

    [3] https://github.com/stepchowfun/toast (shameless plug)

  4. coq

    Coq is a formal proof management system. It provides a formal language to write mathematical definitions, executable algorithms and theorems together with an environment for semi-interactive development of machine-checked proofs.

    - A build system like Nix [1] but with a better user experience / more straightforward command-line tooling.

    - A dependently typed programming language like Coq [2] (or Agda, Idris, Lean, etc.) that is sufficiently approachable to gain enough mindshare that companies start adopting it for mission-critical work.

    - A version control system which scales to petabytes or more. Something that I could put large video files in without thinking twice about it. Something a large company could use for their monorepo—or even their data warehouse.

    - A note-taking tool that allows me to organize notes in a graph with links between them (like a wiki), not as files and folders in a tree, which enforces the invariant that every note is transitively reachable from some "root" so I never lose a note.

    - Something like Toast [3] but which is also designed for running services in production, not just local development and continuous integration. A unified way to run code in dev, test, and prod environments. A new k8s.

    [1] https://nixos.org/

    [2] https://coq.inria.fr/

    [3] https://github.com/stepchowfun/toast (shameless plug)

  5. wappalyzer

    Discontinued Identify technology on websites.

  6. suture

    🏥 A Ruby gem that helps you refactor your legacy code

    There's a gem for Ruby that does a limited version of this: https://github.com/testdouble/suture

    Suture is geared towards refactoring, so it doesn't do it for every function at once, and instead you have to specify methods manually.

  7. Playwright

    Playwright is a framework for Web Testing and Automation. It allows testing Chromium, Firefox and WebKit with a single API.

    It doesn't check all your boxes, but have you tried Playwright?

    https://playwright.dev

  8. EdenSCM

    Discontinued A Scalable, User-Friendly Source Control System. [Moved to: https://github.com/facebook/sapling]

    > - A build system / package manager like Nix [1] but with a better user experience / more straightforward command-line tooling.

    Working on it :)

    > - A version control system which scales to petabytes or more. Something that I could put large video files in without thinking twice about it. Something a large company could use for their monorepo—or even their data warehouse.

    https://github.com/facebookexperimental/eden

    > A note-taking tool that allows me to organize notes in a graph with links between them

    https://www.orgroam.com/

  9. Nutrient

    Nutrient – The #1 PDF SDK Library, trusted by 10K+ developers. Other PDF SDKs promise a lot - then break. Laggy scrolling, poor mobile UX, tons of bugs, and lack of support cost you endless frustrations. Nutrient’s SDK handles billion-page workloads - so you don’t have to debug PDFs. Used by ~1 billion end users in more than 150 different countries.

    Nutrient logo
  10. org-roam

    Rudimentary Roam replica with Org-mode

    > - A build system / package manager like Nix [1] but with a better user experience / more straightforward command-line tooling.

    Working on it :)

    > - A version control system which scales to petabytes or more. Something that I could put large video files in without thinking twice about it. Something a large company could use for their monorepo—or even their data warehouse.

    https://github.com/facebookexperimental/eden

    > A note-taking tool that allows me to organize notes in a graph with links between them

    https://www.orgroam.com/

  11. algo

    Set up a personal VPN in the cloud

  12. optionator

    JavaScript option parsing and help generation library

  13. modd

    A flexible developer tool that runs processes and responds to filesystem changes

  14. devd

    A local webserver for developers

  15. autotest

  16. annotate.el

    Annotate.el

    There's an Emacs mode that does this called annotate. But why would this be better than just leaving a comment on the file?

    https://github.com/bastibe/annotate.el

  17. tree-sitter

    An incremental parsing system for programming tools

    Too bad, I don't have time to build it

    [0] https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter

  18. guard-livereload

    Guard::LiveReload automatically reload your browser when 'view' files are modified.

  19. livereload-js

    LiveReload JavaScript code that communicates with the server and implements reloading

  20. ntfy

    Send push notifications to your phone or desktop using PUT/POST

    A CLI tool that can be used to observe and act on the return code and/or output of any CLI tool on Linux. It should have a way to notify [1] the user after a long-running CLI program terminates on Linux.

    It would have similar semantics to the time utility. Let's call this tool timed.

    For instance, prefixing any task with the time utility e.g. "time dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb" would output the duration of the underlying task.

    Similarly, executing "timed dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb" would send a notification to the user when the task completes containing the return code and any console output.

    1: Paired with something like https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy. This would allow a user to set up multiple ways to receive the notification, including Telegram/Slack, SMS, push notification, email or simply just turning console outputs into a continuous audio note similar to http://listen.hatnote.com/

  21. obsidian-releases

    Community plugins list, theme list, and releases of Obsidian.

    > - A note-taking tool that allows me to organize notes in a graph with links between them (like a wiki), not as files and folders in a tree, which enforces the invariant that every note is transitively reachable from some "root" (by following links) so I never lose a note.

    There is a class of note taking apps that's becoming increasingly popular (at least I perceive it that way) that does this. They store notes in local Markdown files, and when you link between pages, they can build and render a graph based on them. For example:

    - Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/

    - Logseq: https://logseq.com/

    - Joplin: https://joplinapp.org/ (not sure if it's built-in, but there's a plugin: https://github.com/treymo/joplin-link-graph)

  22. logseq

    A local-first, non-linear, outliner notebook for organizing and sharing your personal knowledge base. Use it to organize your todo list, to write your journals, or to record your unique life.

    > - A note-taking tool that allows me to organize notes in a graph with links between them (like a wiki), not as files and folders in a tree, which enforces the invariant that every note is transitively reachable from some "root" (by following links) so I never lose a note.

    There is a class of note taking apps that's becoming increasingly popular (at least I perceive it that way) that does this. They store notes in local Markdown files, and when you link between pages, they can build and render a graph based on them. For example:

    - Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/

    - Logseq: https://logseq.com/

    - Joplin: https://joplinapp.org/ (not sure if it's built-in, but there's a plugin: https://github.com/treymo/joplin-link-graph)

  23. Joplin

    Joplin - the privacy-focused note taking app with sync capabilities for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.

    > - A note-taking tool that allows me to organize notes in a graph with links between them (like a wiki), not as files and folders in a tree, which enforces the invariant that every note is transitively reachable from some "root" (by following links) so I never lose a note.

    There is a class of note taking apps that's becoming increasingly popular (at least I perceive it that way) that does this. They store notes in local Markdown files, and when you link between pages, they can build and render a graph based on them. For example:

    - Obsidian: https://obsidian.md/

    - Logseq: https://logseq.com/

    - Joplin: https://joplinapp.org/ (not sure if it's built-in, but there's a plugin: https://github.com/treymo/joplin-link-graph)

  24. Visual Studio Code

    Visual Studio Code

  25. logos

    Logging + Printing + Compromising (by bbkane)

    - Beekeeper Studio (after conversion to SQLite)

    This won't scale to large projects, but it works well for the little CLI tools I enjoy writing in my spare time.

    I wrote about this (with some screenshots) at https://github.com/bbkane/logos#analyze-as-json

  26. jj

    Discontinued A Git-compatible VCS that is both simple and powerful [Moved to: https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj] (by martinvonz)

  27. TablaM

    The practical relational programing language for data-oriented applications

    I wish to resurrect the spirit of the Fox/dbase family of languages. I start from the bottom with a language more on line with data manipulation: https://tablam.org.

    But what they have is integrated REPL + Jupiter-like Command Window + UI Builder. It was a "low-code" kind of tool way before the idea of today, but also a real, full-featured, serous pro-developer environment.

  28. linenote

    VSCode extension to add notes to the line of code.

  29. vscodium

    binary releases of VS Code without MS branding/telemetry/licensing

    Are you aware of VSCodium (https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium#readme) and does it not meet your criteria because it's "dominated" by Microsoft?

    The rest of the terms such as "responsive," "easy to use", and "no unique interfaces" make your request hard to fulfill

  30. Guard

    Guard is a command line tool to easily handle events on file system modifications.

    Perhaps using guard you can automate that https://github.com/guard/guard

  31. intellij-plugins

    Open-source plugins included in the distribution of IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate and other IDEs based on the IntelliJ Platform

    https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/

    They make IDEs for many languages but the indexability of languages varies a lot depending on (mostly) how strong their type system is and how easily parsed the code is. Check out their structured search feature for an example of how to do semantic queries over the indexed AST.

  32. git-bug

    Distributed, offline-first bug tracker embedded in git, with bridges

    Do you fancy re-thinking buf trackers? I'm looking for help over at https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug to create a distributed bug tracker embeded in git, with bridges.

    It's close to be ready for prime time, yet there is so much that could be done to make it better.

  33. cli

    Makerflow is a deep work and collaboration assistant for developers. Get in the zone without hiding away from your product manager, designer or other teammates! (by makerflow)

    Yes, docs on the website are upcoming. Meanwhile I have some documentation on github for the cli [1] and vscode plugin [2]

    [1] https://github.com/makerflow/cli

  34. vscode-plugin

    VS Code extension that helps you balance deep work and collaboration, so you can get more done without hiding away from your team (by makerflow)

  35. SaaSHub

    SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

    SaaSHub logo
NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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