The Ultimate Toolkit for Expert Software Engineers
As a software engineer, the tools you use define the quality, speed, and efficiency of your workflow. From writing clean code to deploying at scale, mastering a comprehensive set of tools is crucial. This blog post dives deep into the essential tools every expert software engineer should know, use, or at least explore.
Table of Contents
- Programming & Development Environments (IDEs & Code Editors)
- DevOps & Infrastructure Tools (CI/CD, Containers, Cloud)
- Project & Task Management Tools
- Collaboration & Communication Tools
- Code Quality & Testing Tools
- Design, UI/UX, and Prototyping Tools
- Security & Vulnerability Scanning Tools
- Performance Monitoring & Debugging Tools
- Browser Extensions & Web Utilities
1. Programming & Development Environments (IDEs & Code Editors)
Visual Studio Code (VS Code) – A lightweight, extensible code editor by Microsoft. It supports numerous languages with features like IntelliSense code completion, debugging, and integrated Git. VS Code is extremely popular (used by ~74% of developers in 2024) due to its rich extension ecosystem and cross-platform availability.
IntelliJ IDEA – A powerful IDE by JetBrains, mainly for Java, Kotlin, and other JVM languages. It offers smart code completion, refactoring, and deep integration with build tools and version control. IntelliJ IDEA comes in a free Community edition and a paid Ultimate edition, and is known for boosting productivity for Java developers.
Visual Studio – Microsoft’s full-featured IDE for Windows, widely used for .NET (C#, F#) and C++ development. It provides a robust code editor with IntelliSense, an advanced debugger, GUI designers, and profiling tools. Visual Studio (Community edition) is free for individuals, offering a fully-featured IDE for building everything from desktop apps to web services.
Eclipse – An open-source IDE originally for Java. It has an extensible plug-in system allowing development in many languages (C/C++, PHP, Python, etc.). Eclipse was once the most popular Java IDE
and still offers features like code refactoring, debugging, and project management through various plugins.
Xcode – Apple’s IDE for macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS development. It includes a code editor, Interface Builder for UI design, simulators for testing across Apple devices, and integrates the Swift and Objective-C toolchains. Xcode is essential for building native apps in the Apple ecosystem.
Sublime Text – A fast, cross-platform source code editor (shareware). It supports many programming and markup languages out of the box and can be extended with community plugins. Sublime Text is popular for its speed, keyboard shortcuts, and “distraction-free” mode.
Vim – A ubiquitous terminal-based text editor known for efficiency. Vim is highly configurable and built for fast text editing, making it a favorite for many experienced developers who appreciate modal editing and powerful keyboard commands.
Emacs – An extensible, customizable text editor. Emacs can be augmented into an entire workflow environment via Emacs Lisp. It’s often called “the swiss-army knife” of editors – highly customizable (with modes for programming, writing, etc.) and “free/libre” open-source software.
Other JetBrains IDEs – JetBrains offers IDEs tailored to specific stacks, built on the IntelliJ platform. For example, PyCharm (Python), WebStorm (JavaScript/TypeScript), CLion (C/C++), Android Studio (for Android, based on IntelliJ
), etc. These share IntelliJ’s intelligent editing and deep integration for their target languages.
2. DevOps & Infrastructure Tools (CI/CD, Containers, Cloud)
Jenkins – A popular open-source automation server for Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD). Written in Java, Jenkins lets teams automate building, testing, and deploying software. It has an unparalleled plugin ecosystem, enabling integration with virtually any tool or workflow in the delivery pipeline.
GitHub Actions – GitHub’s built-in CI/CD platform. It allows automation of workflows (build, test, deploy) triggered by events in a GitHub repo. Developers define workflows as YAML, and Actions provides runners (Linux, Windows, macOS) for executing jobs. It’s tightly integrated with GitHub, making it easy to set up continuous integration and delivery alongside your code.
GitLab CI/CD – GitLab’s integrated CI/CD system. Configuration lives in a
.gitlab-ci.ymlfile, and it automatically runs pipelines on pushes. GitLab CI can build, test, and deploy applications on each commit. It’s known for being developer-friendly and seamlessly integrated with GitLab’s version control and DevOps tools.CircleCI – A cloud-based CI/CD service that automates building and testing of software. It integrates with repositories (GitHub, Bitbucket, etc.) and runs jobs in clean VMs or containers for Linux, macOS, or Windows. CircleCI is known for fast parallel builds and an easy-to-use web UI. It’s often chosen for its convenience (as a hosted solution) and robust support for dockerized builds.
Docker – An open platform for containerization. Docker packages applications and their environments into containers, making them portable across different environments. It enables developers to separate apps from underlying infrastructure, simplifying deployment. Docker is fundamental for modern microservices and DevOps workflows, allowing quick software delivery and consistent environment setup.
Kubernetes – An open-source container orchestration system (originally by Google). Kubernetes automates deploying, scaling, and managing containerized applications. It handles container scheduling onto nodes in a cluster, load-balancing, rolling updates, and self-healing (restarting failed containers). K8s (Kubernetes) is essential for running containers in production at scale.
Cloud Platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) – Cloud infrastructure platforms providing on-demand computing, storage, databases, and more:
Amazon Web Services (AWS) – the largest and most comprehensive cloud, offering 200+ fully featured services globally
(EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, etc.). AWS is commonly used for its breadth of services and maturity.
Microsoft Azure – Microsoft’s cloud platform with a wide range of services (VMs, Azure App Services, Azure SQL, etc.) and easy integration with Microsoft tools. Azure is often chosen by enterprises for its seamless Windows/.NET support and broad cloud offerings.
Google Cloud Platform (GCP) – Google’s suite of cloud services, from compute (Google Compute Engine, Kubernetes Engine) to big data and ML (BigQuery, TensorFlow), known for its data analytics and high-performance infrastructure
- Hostinger – Hostinger is a web hosting company offering affordable hosting plans, fast performance, and excellent customer support. To start with Hostinger, simply visit their website, choose a hosting plan, and follow the easy sign-up process to set up your website.
Terraform – An open-source Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool by HashiCorp. Terraform uses a declarative configuration (HCL language) to provision and manage infrastructure across providers (clouds like AWS/Azure/GCP, and on-prem). It enables versioning and repeatable deployment of infrastructure, treating infrastructure setup similar to code. This helps in automating environment setup and maintaining consistency across environments.
(Other DevOps tools include configuration management like Ansible/Chef/Puppet for automating server setup, and container registries, but the above are core daily drivers.)
3. Project & Task Management Tools (Agile Boards, Issue Trackers)
Jira – A proprietary issue tracking and agile project management tool by Atlassian. Jira is used for bug tracking, sprint planning, and issue workflows. Teams use it to create user stories or bugs, assign work, and track progress through Scrum or Kanban boards. It’s highly customizable with fields, workflows, and reports (burn-down charts, velocity) to monitor project status. Jira is very common in software teams practicing Agile methodologies.
Trello – A web-based Kanban-style list-making app (also by Atlassian). Trello organizes projects into boards with columns (lists) and cards
for tasks. It’s simple and visual – teams drag cards across lists (e.g. To Do, Doing, Done) to reflect progress. Trello is great for lightweight task management and personal or small team projects due to its intuitive interface.
Asana – A web and mobile application designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work. Asana provides projects, tasks, assignees, due dates, and kanban boards or timeline views for project planning. It’s often used to coordinate teamwork and ensure everyone knows their responsibilities and deadlines. Asana’s appeal is in its clean UI and flexibility for different project styles (Kanban, list, calendar).
Azure Boards (Azure DevOps) – The work tracking tool in Microsoft’s Azure DevOps suite. Azure Boards provides backlogs, Kanban boards, and work items (user stories, bugs, tasks) to plan and track work across teams. It integrates with Azure Repos and Pipelines, linking code changes or builds to work items. Useful for teams already in the Azure DevOps ecosystem, it offers similar functionality to Jira (sprints, queries, and dashboards for progress tracking).
Other Tools – Monday.com, ClickUp, and Notion are also popular for project and task management. Monday.com provides visual project tracking with customizable workflows. ClickUp is an all-in-one work platform combining tasks, docs, goals, etc. Notion can serve as a wiki and task board (with databases/pages) – many startups use Notion to manage tasks alongside documentation due to its versatility.
4. Collaboration & Communication Tools (Chat, Video, Documentation)
Slack – A widely-used business chat platform for real-time team communication. Slack provides channels (group chat rooms organized by topic), private groups, and direct messaging
. It integrates with many services (GitHub, CI tools, etc.), sending notifications into chat. Slack’s searchable message history and thread features help teams discuss and resolve issues quickly, making it a staple for modern software team collaboration.
Microsoft Teams – An enterprise communication platform part of Microsoft 365. Teams offers persistent group chat, video conferencing, voice calls, and file collaboration (integrated with SharePoint/OneDrive). It’s commonly used in corporate environments, providing a one-stop hub for meetings (video calls), chats, and Office document collaboration. Teams is often favored by organizations already using Microsoft’s suite.
Zoom – A popular video conferencing tool. Zoom is used for remote meetings, daily stand-ups, or client calls with features like screen sharing and recording. Its reliability and ease of use at scale (from 1:1 meetings to webinars) made it ubiquitous for distributed teams. Many engineers use Zoom (or alternatives like Google Meet) daily for standups, pair programming sessions, and cross-team meetings.
Confluence – A documentation and wiki tool by Atlassian. Confluence lets teams create, share, and organize knowledge in pages/spaces. It’s often used to maintain project documentation, design docs, runbooks, meeting notes, etc. in one accessible place. Tight integration with Jira (e.g., linking requirements to Jira issues) makes it useful for coordinating project requirements and docs.
Notion – An all-in-one workspace for notes, docs, and lightweight project management. Teams use Notion to write technical specs, maintain to-do lists or roadmaps, and create knowledge bases with rich content (text, tables, boards). Its flexibility and real-time collaboration features make it popular for documentation and planning in smaller teams or startups.
Google Workspace (Docs/Drive) – Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are heavily used for collaborative documentation and planning. Google Docs allows multiple engineers to co-author design documents or RFCs simultaneously. Spreadsheets (Sheets) might be used for tracking OKRs or test matrices. All files are stored in Google Drive for easy sharing. Similarly, Office 365 (Word/Excel) is used in some orgs for documents, though Google’s real-time collaboration is often preferred for fast-paced teams.
Email & Issue Discussions – Traditional but still essential: email clients (like Outlook or Gmail) for official communications, and discussion forums or Q&A platforms (like Stack Overflow for Teams or Discourse forums) for longer-form discussions or knowledge sharing internally.
(In summary, Slack/Teams cover day-to-day chat, Zoom covers live meetings, and Confluence/Notion/Docs cover documentation needs – ensuring everyone stays informed and in sync.)
5. Code Quality & Testing Tools (Unit Testing, CI Tests, Static Analysis)
Unit Testing Frameworks – Each language has common frameworks: JUnit (Java), pytest or unittest (Python), JUnit/Mockito (for Java testing/mocking), xUnit/NUnit (C#), Jest/Mocha (JavaScript), etc. These frameworks let developers write automated unit tests to verify individual components’ correctness. They integrate with build tools and CI pipelines so tests run on each commit. For example, a Java project might use JUnit in Maven or Gradle, while a Node.js project uses Jest via npm scripts.
Integration & E2E Testing – Tools to test how components work together or to test UIs:
Selenium WebDriver – A classic for automating web browser interactions. It allows writing tests (in Java, Python, etc.) that simulate user actions in a browser, to verify web application behavior (often used for regression UI testing).
Cypress – A modern end-to-end testing framework for web apps, which runs tests directly in the browser. Cypress provides a fast, developer-friendly way to write UI tests and see results in real time (with automatic waits and DOM snapshots).
Postman – A platform for API development and testing. Developers use Postman to craft HTTP requests to their APIs, verify responses, and even write test scripts for API endpoints. It’s great for exploratory testing of RESTful APIs and can be used to build automated integration test suites for backend services.
Static Code Analysis – Tools that analyze source code for potential issues without running it:
SonarQube – An open-source platform for continuous inspection of code quality. SonarQube performs static analysis to detect code smells, bugs, and security vulnerabilities in code
. It provides a dashboard with code quality metrics (like duplication, complexity) and integrates with CI/CD so that code quality gates can break the build if new issues are introduced.
Linters & Style Checkers – e.g., ESLint for JavaScript/TypeScript, Pylint/Flake8 for Python, Checkstyle/PMD for Java, Rubocop for Ruby. These tools enforce coding standards and catch errors (like undefined variables or bad syntax) early. They often integrate into editors and CI pipelines to ensure code consistency.
Code Formatters – e.g., Prettier (JS), Black (Python), clang-format (C++). While not finding bugs, these ensure a consistent style, reducing diffs and arguments about code style, which indirectly improves code quality and readability.
Coverage and Quality Gates – Tools like JUnit + JaCoCo (for Java) or Istanbul/nyc (for JS) measure test coverage. Coupled with CI, teams set quality gates (e.g., at least 80% code coverage). Additionally, pipeline tools like Git hooks (using tools like Husky) or pre-commit can run linters/tests locally before code is pushed, ensuring code meets quality standards.
Package & Dependency Scanners – To maintain quality and security, tools such as Dependabot (built into GitHub) or Snyk check your project dependencies for known vulnerabilities or outdated libraries. They alert or even auto-create pull requests to update dependencies, helping maintain code health over time.
6. Design, UI/UX, and Prototyping Tools
Figma – A leading collaborative interface design tool. Figma is a vector graphics editor and prototyping tool that runs mainly in the browser (with desktop apps for offline use)
. Designers and developers use it to create wireframes, high-fidelity UI designs, and clickable prototypes. It allows real-time collaboration, so multiple people can design together or provide feedback. Many software teams use Figma for designing application UIs and sharing design specs.
Adobe XD – Adobe’s tool for UI/UX design and prototyping. It offers vector design and prototyping similar to Figma. XD is integrated with Adobe’s ecosystem (Photoshop/Illustrator), and designers use it to craft app screens and link them into interactive prototypes. It’s used for designing user interfaces and experience flows, especially in teams already using Adobe products.
Sketch – A popular Mac-only design tool, primarily used for UI and icon design. Sketch introduced a focus on designing interfaces and supports a rich plugin ecosystem. Many design systems and UI kits are available for Sketch. Developers often receive design specs in Sketch format (or via exported assets) to implement in code.
Balsamiq – A tool for quick sketch-style wireframes. Balsamiq is great for early-stage design when you want to map out screen layouts and user flow in a low-fidelity way. It intentionally uses a hand-drawn style for UI components, encouraging focus on structure over pixel-perfect details. Product managers and engineers use it to brainstorm UI ideas or communicate rough layouts.
InVision – A digital product design platform often used in conjunction with static design tools. Designers import screens (from Sketch, XD, etc.) into InVision to create interactive prototypes and gather stakeholder feedback (with comments). It also offers a digital whiteboard (InVision Freehand) for collaboration. InVision was an early standard for clickable prototypes and design handoff, though Figma’s prototyping features have reduced the need for separate tools.
Miro (or Mural) – While not a UI design tool per se, these online whiteboard apps are used in the design process. Teams collaborate on user journey maps, flow diagrams, or brainstorming sessions on a canvas. This is useful for architectural diagrams or planning user experiences. For example, mapping out user flows or feature mindmaps in Miro before diving into detailed UI design.
Graphic Editing Tools – Software engineers occasionally use graphic tools for creating assets or editing images. Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator are industry standard for image editing and vector illustration, respectively, and might be used to prepare app graphics or logos. GIMP and Inkscape are open-source alternatives.
(In summary, Figma (and similar tools) ensure that the engineering team has a clear blueprint of what to build – from visual layouts to user interactions – and facilitate collaboration with designers for a polished user experience.)
7. Security & Vulnerability Scanning Tools
OWASP ZAP – The OWASP Zed Attack Proxy is a free, open-source penetration testing tool for web applications. It helps developers and security engineers find security vulnerabilities in web apps by acting as a proxy that intercepts and inspects HTTP requests/responses
. ZAP can perform active scans (attempt common attacks like SQL injection, XSS) and passive scans (monitor traffic for signs of vulnerabilities). It’s a handy tool for devs to run security checks on their web applications during development.
Burp Suite – A popular web security testing suite (commercial with a free limited version). Burp Suite allows intercepting traffic, scanning for vulnerabilities, and even automating attacks. Security researchers and penetration testers use it extensively, but developers can also use it (with caution) to probe their application’s security. It includes a proxy, spider, intruder (for automating customized attacks), and repeater for manual request crafting.
Snyk – A developer-friendly security platform that focuses on finding and fixing vulnerabilities in dependencies (open-source libraries, containers, etc.). Snyk can scan your project’s package manifests (like
package.json,pom.xml, etc.) for known vulnerable versionsand suggest upgrades or patches. Often integrated into CI pipelines or IDEs, it helps catch security issues early by informing developers when a library has a known CVE.
Dependabot – Integrated into GitHub, Dependabot regularly checks your dependencies for updates and known security vulnerabilities. It can automatically open pull requests to bump versions of libraries that have security fixes. This automation ensures developers are quickly notified of insecure components in their software stack.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools – These are static analyzers specialized in security. Examples include Checkmarx, Fortify Static Code Analyzer, and SonarQube’s security rules. They scan source code for security issues like SQL injection, XSS, insecure use of crypto, etc., without executing the program. Often used in enterprise environments, they help enforce secure coding practices by flagging risky code patterns.
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) & Scanners – Tools that test running applications for vulnerabilities. Aside from OWASP ZAP/Burp, there are services like Acunetix or Nessus that perform automated scans for web vulnerabilities or network issues. These might be run periodically against staging environments to catch security regressions. For container security, tools like Anchore or Trivy scan container images for known vulnerabilities in OS packages.
Infrastructure Security Tools – In DevOps workflows, tools such as HashiCorp Vault (for managing secrets), AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) best practices scanners, and Terraform Sentinel (policy as code) help ensure infrastructure and credentials are secure. While not daily “workflow” tools for all devs, they are important in the security toolchain for an engineering team.
Security Monitoring – After deployment, tools like Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) or cloud security monitors (e.g., AWS GuardDuty) watch for suspicious activities. While these might be handled by a security team, an expert engineer is often aware of them and may tune the application or infrastructure accordingly.
(Security tools are integrated throughout development – from coding (SAST), to dependency management, to testing (DAST), to deployment – to proactively catch vulnerabilities and protect applications.)
8. Performance Monitoring & Debugging Tools
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) – Tools that monitor applications in production for performance issues, errors, and usage:
New Relic – A SaaS APM platform that provides in-depth performance metrics (response times, throughput), error tracking, and transaction traces. It supports many languages and frameworks, allowing engineers to pinpoint slow database queries or functions in a live app. New Relic also offers server and browser monitoring for full-stack visibility.
Datadog – A monitoring & analytics platform used for aggregating logs, metrics, and traces from applications and infrastructure. Datadog provides dashboards and alerting for everything from server CPU to custom application metrics. Its APM component helps trace requests across microservices, making it easier to find bottlenecks. It’s valued for cloud-native apps where one can monitor containers, services, and logs in one place
.
Prometheus & Grafana – Open-source monitoring stack. Prometheus collects numeric metrics from applications and systems (often via exporters) and allows powerful querying. Grafana is used to visualize those metrics on dashboards. Together, they are widely used for performance monitoring of services, especially in Kubernetes environments. Engineers use them to track metrics like request latencies, memory usage, or custom app metrics and set up alerts when thresholds exceed.
Logging & Error Tracking:
ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) – A popular open-source solution for centralized logging. Applications output logs, Logstash (or Beats) ship them to Elasticsearch, and Kibana provides a UI to search and visualize logs. This helps debug issues by aggregating logs from across many instances or microservices. For example, if an error occurred, engineers can query all logs in Kibana to find related events.
Splunk – A powerful (enterprise) log aggregation and analysis tool. Similar to ELK, but with its own query language and advanced features. Splunk can ingest huge volumes of machine data (logs, metrics) and is used for both debugging and security auditing. Engineers might use Splunk to troubleshoot complex prod issues by digging through log patterns.
Sentry – Focused on error monitoring for applications. Sentry captures exceptions and crashes from applications (web, mobile, backend) and aggregates them with stack traces, user context, and frequency. Developers get alerted when new errors occur, and can see which release introduced an error. This is invaluable for quickly identifying and fixing runtime errors.
Profilers & Debuggers:
Chrome DevTools – Built directly into Google Chrome, DevTools is a suite of web development debugging tools. It lets developers inspect HTML/CSS, debug JavaScript in the browser, profile performance, and analyze network requests
. Web developers use it constantly to tweak page layout (via the Elements inspector), debug JS logic in real time (using breakpoints in the Sources panel), and optimize page performance (using the Network and Performance tabs, or Lighthouse audits).
Interactive Debuggers (IDE Debugging) – IDEs like Visual Studio, IntelliJ, or VS Code provide debugging tools where you can set breakpoints, step through code, and watch variables. For instance, Visual Studio’s debugger can attach to a running process and allow step-by-step execution with variable inspection, greatly simplifying bug finding in complex code. Similarly, VS Code can debug Node.js, Python, etc., with the right extensions and configurations.
GDB/LLDB – Low-level debuggers for C/C++ or other compiled languages (GDB for GNU/Linux, LLDB for LLVM/macOS). These allow stepping through binary code, examining memory, and are essential when debugging native applications or crashes (e.g., analyzing core dumps). Expert engineers use them when needed to find memory corruptions or performance issues in native code.
Profilers – Tools like JProfiler/VisualVM (Java), dotTrace (for .NET), or perf (Linux) help identify performance hotspots by measuring CPU usage, memory allocation, and more. They produce profiles that show which functions consume the most resources. This guides optimization – for example, an engineer might use a profiler to discover that a certain method is using 80% of execution time, indicating an opportunity to optimize an algorithm.
Network & API Debugging:
Postman – (As mentioned earlier) widely used for testing and debugging APIs. When developing a backend service, an engineer uses Postman to send various HTTP requests, verify the responses, and reproduce issues. It’s also useful for checking third-party APIs during integration.
Fiddler & Charles Proxy – Tools for intercepting HTTP(S) traffic from applications. They act as a proxy server to capture requests/responses. This is extremely useful for debugging issues like: what data is being sent to an API, or modifying a request to test how the server responds. Web and mobile developers use these to troubleshoot client-server communication. For instance, Fiddler can show if a web app is requesting the correct endpoint and what response it gets, helping isolate issues.
Wireshark – A network protocol analyzer that captures low-level network packets. It’s used to debug network issues, inspect protocol-level data (TCP, DNS, etc.), or diagnose performance issues at the network level. While not used daily by most software engineers, it’s essential when debugging complex networking problems (e.g., investigating latency or handshake issues).
System & Performance Monitoring:
Tools like htop/atop (for real-time CPU/memory on Linux), Docker stats, or cloud monitoring dashboards (like AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor) help engineers keep an eye on how their application is performing in terms of system resources. If an application is slow or crashing, these tools might reveal high CPU, memory leaks, or failing host instances.
Grafana (already mentioned) often also visualizes business KPIs or custom metrics from apps, which can blur into monitoring application health versus pure performance (for example, tracking user sign-ups per minute vs. server response time).
In daily work, an expert engineer will use a combination of these tools: monitoring dashboards to catch anomalies, log search to investigate errors, and debuggers or profilers to zoom into code-level issues. This holistic approach ensures reliability and performance in their software.
9. Browser Extensions & Utilities for Web Developers
React Developer Tools – A browser extension (available for Chrome/Firefox) for inspecting React component hierarchies on web pages. It adds a panel to DevTools that shows the React component tree, props, state, and hooks of each component. This is indispensable when debugging React applications – you can select components and see how props/state change in real time.
Redux DevTools – An extension that works with Redux (state management library) in JavaScript apps. It lets developers inspect Redux store state, dispatched actions, and time-travel debug (rewinding or replaying actions). This helps track down where state changes may be occurring incorrectly in complex applications.
Vue.js DevTools – Similar concept for Vue applications. It allows inspection of Vue components, their data, and events. Framework-specific devtools exist for Angular as well (Augury for Angular) – all aimed at giving insight into the framework’s inner workings beyond what the generic browser DevTools provide.
Browser debugging aids:
JSON Viewer/Formatter – When hitting a REST API endpoint that returns JSON, browser default view might be unformatted. Extensions like JSONView or JSON Formatter will automatically pretty-print JSON in the browser, making it easier to read API responses during development.
LiveReload/Live Server – These tools (sometimes as extensions or Node.js packages) automatically refresh the browser when code changes. For web developers, this speeds up the feedback loop. For instance, the Live Server extension in VS Code launches a local dev server and reloads the page on file save.
ColorZilla – A browser eyedropper extension to pick colors from web pages. Useful for frontend devs to match design specs – you can hover and copy the exact color value of any pixel on the page.
Accessibility Inspectors – Extensions like axe DevTools or WAVE help check web accessibility by analyzing a page for issues (like missing alt text or ARIA roles). They integrate into the browser to provide reports so developers can ensure their site is accessible.
Wappalyzer – A browser extension that detects the tech stack of websites you visit. Wappalyzer uncovers the technologies used on a site (CMS, JavaScript frameworks, analytics tools, etc.)
. Web developers often use it to satisfy curiosity (e.g., “What is this site built with?”) or to glean insight into patterns in an industry. It’s a quick way to identify if a site uses React, Angular, or Vue, what backend or CMS it might be running, and so on.
GitHub Enhancements – If you work with GitHub a lot, extensions like Octotree (which shows a file tree for repos in the browser) can be useful. They allow easier navigation of large repositories on the web. There are also GitHub syntax highlight or dark theme extensions that some developers enjoy for productivity/comfort when browsing code.
Utilities – Postman Interceptor is a companion extension for Postman that can capture browser requests and cookies, bridging the gap between web debugging and API testing. Other utilities include VPN extensions (to test geo-specific behavior), screen capture extensions (to quickly snap and annotate screenshots of a bug in the UI), and performance analyzers like Lighthouse (which is built into Chrome DevTools audits, but also available as a CLI or Node module).
Final Thoughts
Being an expert software engineer isn’t just about writing code—it’s about choosing the right tools and mastering them. Whether you’re deploying containers to the cloud, writing pixel-perfect UIs, or debugging production bugs at 2 AM, having the right tools at your disposal is what sets great engineers apart.
What’s in your toolbox?