A Look Back, A Step Forward

In this read, you will get to know some of the tools I have used in the past year which were worth to be used further.

Courtesy to to-the-point readers, skip these 3 paragraphs. :)

The past year has been a joyride for all kinds of developers around the globe, a lot of open-source projects finally came out of their cocoons showcasing unique colors. TBH, For a long time I have thought about actually making an impact via open source but never got the gist of how to step in and where to start.

Finally, Kunal Kushwaha has motivated me to write this blog and I am having a good intuition that I am on right track this time. So thanks to him for that 🤗.

Even though I've been doing development for the past 2 years now but it feels like I am still in a cocoon wanting to come out and flourish. So by the means of blogs, I hope I find the space I am looking for to grow.

Enough of me, let's get into it...

1. PNPM

Have you ever felt your package manager takes a lot of time to just set up dependencies that were already installed some time ago in a different project? or Do your node modules consume a lot of storage? Well, this tool is most probably what you were looking for.

• Package Manager with Space efficiency and monorepos in mind.

• This tool can easily replace your npm/yarn setup with no extra effort.

• Has all the features of other package managers + extra, check the comparison.

2. React Query

Caching and storing the state of sever requests has always been the hustle of a frontend dev. If you are among the ones who use a custom context-based state management solution? then this is what you have been missing out on.

It is one of those tools which takes just a small learning push then you will never go back after that and thank god tools such as this exist.

• Makes state management a no-brainer.

• Features outweigh the size of the package.

• Less/Clean/Manageable code.

• Good documentation with examples.

• Try for yourself

3. Docusaurus

This is the best in the class documentation site generator. For the most part, you won't even need to code, but If you are a react developer, it would be very natural to adapt and customize.

• Uses markdown to write most parts of the documentation.

• Easy by default, customizable by nature.

• Rich Templates and examples support.

• Wanna try? Use these playgrounds.

4. StackBlitz

It's my go-to web editor for experimenting with any kind of Nodejs project. I mostly use it to test out libraries and frameworks, you can even spin up a backend server.

• It gives a feel of local IDE with its simple and intuitive interface.

• It's great for prototyping, creating small projects, or for learning new frameworks and technologies.

• The most commonly used boilerplates are available.

5. Vitejs

If you are a front-end developer, you must be following this amazing tool. Gone are the days when we had to wait for the development server to start and do it's hot reload in between prototyping and testing.

Vite is a build tool that can be a great alternative to webpack based development server, Some of the features are:

• No bundling, files are directly served on demand.

• Fast HMR, no matter the size of your project.

• Vite is lightweight, it only includes the features you need to get started with development, without any unnecessary bloat.

• Built-in support for TypeScript, so you don't have to set up any additional configuration.

• Almost available on all your favorite frameworks(React, Vue, SvelteKit...), try on stackblitz.

Honorable mentions

1. Playwright- End-to-end testing tool with browser compatibility and new frameworks in mind.

2. Remotion- A video creation tool using reactive programming

3. Act- A GitHub action testing tool for local testing.

I have many other suggestions to share hopefully I'll create more focused and in-depth blogs in the coming days, so follow me or subscribe if you resonate with my content 😁.

P.S.: This was my first ever blog so I am highly anticipating constructive criticism🙌.

Thanks for reading it through 💛