9 Killer Developer Tools You Should be Exploring Right Now 🔥🚀

Staying productive as a developer has long time ago evolved from writing code only! It's also about finding the right tools that make you work smarter, automate the boring tasks, and keep your projects running without any issues.

However, nowadays with new platforms being released all over the place every day, it is pretty easy to get lost in the sea of available options and miss the ones that could actually bring a practical value to you.

I have manually handpicked a list of 9 modern developer tools that are bound to boost your productivity whether you are creating APIs, handling dependencies, visualizing databases, or optimizing performance.

From efficient build acceleration, visual testing, and no-code API creation tools to env variable management and documentation platforms, this list should cover various needs for developer workflow.

Each tool is explained by its core features, and a screenshot, as well as links, are provided for you to decide which ones will be the most helpful for you. Let's dive in!

1. Depot – Accelerate Docker builds & CI workflows

Depot is an build acceleration platform that aims to make Docker image builds as well as CI workflows much faster and more efficient, letting you focus on building the product itself.

If supports remote container builds and fully-managed GitHub Actions runners, and helps engineering teams not only cut down build times but also simplify their development pipelines.

They have just introduced powerful new Egress filtering for GitHub Actions Runners, which means you can get very specific about how your network is accessed when running your CI jobs:

🔒 Fine-grained network control: Specify the exact external services your GitHub Actions runners can use and set up rules for outbound connections via IP, CIDR, or hostname to be accepted or blocked.

🛡️ Allow and deny policies: Set blanket allow or deny rules for all outbound traffic, then create exceptions for only the services your builds need—minimizing your attack surface for your project.

🔗 Built-in allowlisting: Depot takes care of the necessary hosts and IPs without you having to do anything that are needed for common build tasks so your workflows work even if filtering is very strict.

⚙️ Easy-to-use interface: Fine-tune Egress filtering parameters in the your Organization’s Settings dashboard, under the Github Actions Runners section “Egress rules“, with intuitive controls for all your target addresses.

🚀 Seamless integration: Egress filtering is compatible with Depot’s runners by default and there is no need to setup anything so you can secure production pipelines and prevent supply chain attacks on the go.

Ready to make your builds stay fast, reliable, and now more secure than ever? Try out Depot and give yourself a peace of mind while accelerating the development for your future projects!

🌎 Website: https://depot.dev

Thanks to the Depot team for sponsoring this article.

2. Phase - Manage secrets and env variables

Phase is an open-source platform designed for developers that provides them with secure and safe means of managing and deploying application secrets and environment variables.