
Top Developer Tools of 2016 - olalonde
https://stackshare.io/posts/top-developer-tools-2016
======
ohyoutravel
JavaScript, Python, PHP, and HTML are developer tools? (yes, they're listed in
four of the top ten spaces of Application & Data Tool of the Year) Isn't that
like saying the #1 business tool is "The English Language"? I guess I expected
a list of things people use like this one (which is phenomenal):

"Scott Hanselman's 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for
Windows"

[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDev...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolListForWindows.aspx)

~~~
minimuffins
The results are in, folks, and The NUMBER ONE programming tool of the year IS:

The general purpose computer! Let's hear a round of applause!

The article reads like an ad for a bunch of commercial services. I was really
hoping for things I could apt-get/brew install <excellent new tool>.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Unfortunately general purpose computing appears to be dying, slowly but
surely. Talos recently wrote a good survey of the problems:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13361389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13361389)

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zwieback
Great list, wrong name, should be something like "top 50 _web_ developer
tools. Not much in there for desktop app developers.

~~~
SteveMoody73
If the list is for all development work then i must be doing something wrong.
I only use 5 of the listed "tools". Github, Gitlab, Vim, Python and Sublime
Text.

These top lists lately always seem to focus on web development and seem to
skip the millions of developers who work have never written a web app.
Desktop, Embedded and backend apps may not be as sexy as the latest web
framework but do run a huge number of businesses and devices in the world.

~~~
matart
My guess is that they source this based on web searches and social media
posts. Those tend to have a more web development focus.

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daveguy
Well, this did point me to a shared password system with an API that I have
not seen before: passbolt
[[https://www.passbolt.com/](https://www.passbolt.com/)]

I have been looking for something like this for a while to securely access and
share credentials from an application. GPL makes me nervous though --
especially AGPL. Does AGPL prevent you from using it as a service from within
a separate program? For example, if OAUTH was AGPL would no one be able to use
"sign in with google/facebook/etc" without open sourcing their software?

~~~
waisbrot
Probably not, but it depends on exactly how the code is arranged.

AGPL says that anyone who can use your code (via web service) counts as having
the code "conveyed" to them, which means the GPL terms apply.

The purpose of this is to stop cases where I put GPL-derived code on a smart
TV but say that since I don't let the TV owner touch the code I don't have to
open source it. Or I wrap GPL-derived code as a web service and don't offer
the source because the GPL'd code stays on my server.

In your example, maybe Facebook takes some AGPL OAuth library and adds 20
lines of code to talk to their database. If they now give you access to call
their OAuth service, they must honor a request from you to look at those 20
lines of code. If the OAuth library that _you_ use to talk to Facebook is
_also_ AGPL _and_ you give someone access to your service, then you have to
release your source to them.

------
criddell
The #1 new tool of the year is a library for adding chat to a project. Why is
chat being added to so many things?

Every time I use Evernote and see the chat button, I wonder if anybody is
actually chatting in Evernote and if they are, why?

~~~
lojack
Absolutely 100%. The only time I ever call a company for support is when they
don't have chat. My company provides both chat and phone support to our
customers (many of whom aren't technically savvy) and chat is overwhelmingly
more used. Support staff can also handle more throughput with chat since you
can easily have 5 simultaneous conversations at a time.

Outside of analytics, real time chat is almost always the first non-core
feature I ever add to a new project.

~~~
skinnymuch
OP is talking about chat as a feature in a product. You're talking about
something completely different - customer support chat.

~~~
shuntress
If your product is a web site, having custom support chat built in to it is a
feature.

~~~
skinnymuch
I think you're still misinterpreting the OP (I know you're not the poster
above :)). [S]he was referring to interpersonal sort of chatting with friends,
colleagues, or people you've met online. Support chat is different. Nothing to
do with "normal" chatting as a feature.

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sapeien
Should qualify this as Web Developer tools. Nearly all of the things here
would be irrelevant to systems programmers.

~~~
jordache
web development more popular

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Unbeliever69
Difficult to take this seriously.

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quickben
It is very hard to take this list seriously as 'visual studio' isn't even
mentioned anywhere. But 'vi' is? So, Vi is a top dev tool, but the _default_
Microsoft dev tool isn't worth the _top_ list?

Another issue. Go to githut.info, Java is second by wide, but it's not 'top'?

The list seems detached from reality and residing in its own bubble.

~~~
rpcope1
Additionally no mention of Eclipse or IntelliJ products, which seems a little
strange, considering how much I see these everywhere.

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mgutten
Didn't expect to see this on HN today. I helped run the analysis, so feel free
to direct any questions about the methodology my way!

~~~
matart
How did you source the information? There are primarily web development tools
on the list.

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ohitsdom
Surprised Visual Studio Code didn't get a mention in the text editor section.

~~~
mgutten
Actually, the reason Visual Studio Code didn't make these rankings is because
the stackshare page wasn't created until mid-2016. Since the rankings were
heavily weighted to tech stack inclusion, VSC's numbers were a bit skewed. We
do our best to keep up with requests to add tools, but as you could imagine
there are _a lot_ of requests.

------
xwowsersx
I'm genuinely curious what the value of stackshare is. Is it a form of
"infotainment"?

It seems to me that if you work as a developer professionally, you'll have a
good sense of what tools and stacks are out there based both on
colleagues/work and the larger developer community you likely interact with.
How does it help me to see that some well-known software is popular? It seems
like just encourages more trend-following in programming.

I suppose I could see the benefit when it comes to SaaS products...this site
gives a way to see all the options out there for things you might want to
outsource.

Am I missing something? Do people find this site to be valuable?

~~~
ohstopitu
I personally use it to keep up with new tools that companies might use or are
becoming popular (always good to have an eye to know what's up).

I don't use it when I want to start a project and I'm looking for tools.

This is a keep at the back of your head kinda thing.

------
msarchet
> Of course, the price of JavaScript comes with the hundreds of dev tools
> needed to launch a simple "Hello World" app.

In node this is as simple as console.log('Hello World')

------
meow_mix
Not sure how this was judged... Seems silly to list jQuery, React, and
Javascript... If jQuery, React etc is on there obviously JS is too? They
should really break down the numbers.

And what is meant by trending? I assumed this was judged by people hiring for
the technology but they list Node as being a top-trend yet on their website
Rails has more job openings than Node... Seems weird.

~~~
mgutten
Originally we thought the same thing, but we wanted to remove as much bias
from the analysis as possible, so we opted to keep all tools in the running.
Since the weighted rank was based heavily on tech stack inclusion, we felt it
was more valuable to keep the raw rankings.

For trending, we calculated tech stack growth over the past 6 months for each
tool. I wish we had time to pull in job data, but the data pull was going to
delay the article a while and there are some core features we were itching to
get at (there's only 6 of us on the team). Not saying this is a perfect list,
but it's a snapshot of the data we have and felt it was a good indication of
what developers/teams are using.

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Arzh
Man I dislike all of their top picks, I guess I'm just old now adays.

~~~
mgutten
Nahhh, the _most_ important thing is to use what works for you and your
project. Any time you don't do that->eventual regret

------
BigChiefSmokem
Top 10 Developers?

Don't know any of them. I must not be in the right inner-circles (I'm guessing
web development judging by this list). That reminds me, do we still consider
Carmack a top developer?

~~~
throwanem
They're apparently the top 10 contributors to Stackshare.io.

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spo81rty
One of the top NEW tools should definitely be Prefix. It was released early in
2016 and is now used by over 10,000 .NET and java developers. It is a
lightweight profiler that tells you everything your code is doing.

[http://stackify.com/prefix](http://stackify.com/prefix)

------
imafish
So web development is the most popular field of software engineering. Makes
you kind of sad.

~~~
ralmeida
Or it's the most popular field among the StackShare users, which is likely.

------
epmatsw
Kite looks intriguing, but sending every keystroke to a remote server is a
bummer

~~~
sergiotapia
Last I heard they will offer a on-premises solution for companies that need
it. However without being connected to the hivemind, I imagine it's utility
will suffer. :(

It's a great idea though!

------
seagreen
Since this list doesn't actually make any sense, I'll list two actually great
developer tools:

\+ The Stack package manager for haskell:
[https://docs.haskellstack.org/en/stable/README/](https://docs.haskellstack.org/en/stable/README/)

\+ NixOS: [https://nixos.org/](https://nixos.org/)

Note that NixOS' drive towards critical mass isn't complete yet. It has great
Haskell support (especially since Stack has nix integration), but may not have
as good support for your language. No point in switching OSes before the time
is right.

------
manigandham
This list makes no sense. Expected better from a site that's focused on tech
stacks.

------
opvasger
"isomorphic javascript"... I thought we had moved past that :(

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FLGMwt
Since we're agreed this is iffy, I'll add mine:

-Visual Studio Code

-yarn

-serverless

------
tyrannoflorist
Node.js:

"Look to an even stronger showing in 2017 as a language-of-choice for multi-
threaded, scalable applications."

lol

~~~
ess3
Now that's just sad...

------
kodisha
Items missing:

\- IntelliJ IDEA

\- John Carmack

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nkkollaw
So, their product is #1?

How convenient...

~~~
brink
Their product isn't even on the list, mate

