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The Magnificent Five: must have tools to speed development



From the translator: this post is a translation of the original article by Rainder de Vries, an experienced programmer who developed his own coding course. The author shares his thoughts about tools that can be useful to developers, allowing you to speed up and optimize the programming process.

Creating an application requires a lot of time and often - money. Sometimes you may lack the means to develop a multi-functional program, and it happens that there are funds, but you need to work as quickly as possible so as not to miss a good moment for release, ahead of the competition. What to do - cut the program's capabilities to finish it quickly, or look for other ways to speed up the process?

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In this article I will talk about five different tools that I recommend using to speed up the development process. They allow you to kill two birds with one stone: reduce the resource consumption of the application (ie, reduce costs), as well as bring a release point closer.
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Parse server




The first tool we’ll look at is the open source cloud backend Parse Server.

Here's how it works:

This is an open-source tool, so you can create and configure your Parse Server instance with many cloud providers like AWS, Heroku, Google App Engine, Azure or Digital Ocean.

Parse Server provides developers with access to a wide range of backend functions. Despite the fact that all the features work fine, before activating you will have to work on setting them up, and then follow the normal operation. This is the difference of this solution from other cloud platforms operating in the “all-in-one” mode.

Parse Server has an excellent Cloud Functions module. Using JavaScript, you can program the execution of tasks on the trigger.

Let's say you're developing a movie reviews service, similar to IMDB. Every time a user publishes a review of a movie, you can track this event and trigger other users of the service about a new review by trigger.

With Parse Server, developers spend less time and money on creating their own backend tools and maintaining web servers. Parse Server is a scalable, relatively simple, customizable tool with a ton of useful features.

pros


Minuses


Cost of

All this is free, but, as mentioned above, to work with the tool you need a cloud like Heroku, and they already cost money.

Platforms

iOS, macOS, tvOS, Android, JavaScript, React, .NET, Unity, PHP, Arduino, Embedded C.

Fastlane




Fastlane is a tool that is sharpened mainly for continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD). Every time you create a new version of the application, it is automatically available to users and beta testers.

Imagine that you created an application and just posted a release 1.0 on the App Store. Two weeks later, fixed bugs and added a new feature. You want as soon as possible to provide an improved version 1.1 to beta testers, and then to users.

Here is what you need to do to complete your task:

If you are a single coder, then you should have enough time to complete all these tasks without additional tools. But imagine that you work in a team and new versions of your programs appear quite often.

In this case, the workflow can become quite complex and confusing. In order to automate everything and simplify, we need Fastline. Here is what he can automate:

Fastline integrates with popular CI / CD tools such as CircleCI, Jenkins and Travis CI.

Best of all, this tool is open-source. This means that developers can improve it by adding their own scripts and plugins. Each of the Fastline features is well documented, including examples and case studies. In general, the tool is just a must have.

pros



Minuses



Price

Is free!

Platforms

iOS, Android.

Application Design Templates




The design of your application means a lot. Good design often provides applications with higher places in the App Store rating, of course, if the program itself is good.

Naturally, users need a normal UX: now they are very demanding on the design, and if it is unsuccessful, then even the best program can remain unpopular.

In order to help the developer understand what design his brainchild needs, there are templates. They are prepared by professional UI-designers, and if you wish, you can tailor them to your needs.

Here is a list of the templates I like most:



Some templates are designed specifically for certain types of applications, such as social networks, productivity solutions, or e-commerce.

When you use a template, make sure that you comply with the license conditions set by the author. A template may be available, but this does not mean at all that you have the right to change it or introduce it into a commercial product.

pros


Minuses


Price

There are paid and free templates.

Platforms

Any.

Paintcode




When you work with PaintCode for the first time, you might think that this is pure magic. In fact, of course, there is no witchcraft, he just knows how to generate code for visual UI components.

Here's how it works:

In a typical situation, the developer designs each element in-house. When the button is ready, its color, text and borders are written in the application. This is a simple visual component, but imagine how much time and effort it will take if it is more complex.

Developers and designers are often forced to look for an intermediate position between the desires of the designer and the capabilities of the programmer. PaintCode allows you to create a UI-component of any complexity, building the necessary code yourself.

The final version is exported to one file, so that it can be re-imported at any time when the component is updated. It is possible to use all sorts of variables and expressions.

In addition, PaintCode has a plugin for Sketch, a popular graphic editor. With it, your projects can be exported from Sketch directly to Swift or Objective-C.

PaintCode is equipped with a large number of tutorials and well written documentation. Support is very responsive and always ready to help.

pros



Minuses



Cost of

Free trial period, then $ 99 per year for a team of 1-3 people.

Platforms

iOS, macOS, Android and web.


Awesome




Technically, Awesome is not a tool, but a resource: a list of frameworks, libraries, courses, books, blogs, podcasts, tools, and patterns for developing applications. A simple search on GitHub shows that the list includes the best of the best, and for different platforms, from iOS and Swift to Android and JavaScript.

I would recommend these collections:


As a conclusion, I’ll say that my top 5 tools for optimizing processes can be expanded by adding your own elements that you use yourself. New tools worth exploring, they need to look for - at least in order to save their own time.

Skillbox recommends:

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/426561/

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