Indie dev tools for daily use

Rebecca
3 min readOct 12, 2020

Dev teams in larger firms have a pre-determined set of tools that they would have to pick the ones they use from. Indie devs on the other hand, have more freedom to explore and try out new things. Every tech enthusiast who is a fan of the latest tech knows the amazing feeling of checking out a new tool and testing it for their purpose.

With the ever evolving tech and constant new ideas, there will be always something new to try out. And there will always be something new to add to your toolkit. The below are suggestions for some great additions to yours.

Illustration by Scale

Collaboration through code:

Independent devs often come across instances where they are paired up with someone from the client’s team. It can get really tricky and collaborating with someone who isn’t right beside you will be a challenge. Code collaboration tools that are well known such as JSFiddle and TeleType are good options. For specific use cases around certain ecosystems and customization, these can be used. JSFIddle alternatives, TeleType for Atom Alternatives will also be great and maybe even better for your use cases. Version control tools to store your work and for deployment will also be required. GitLab is among the most trusted for this. Also find some alternatives listed here. For design collaboration, try Zeplin when working with your design team. It makes collaboration much simpler across platforms with ready to use snippets.

Tracking and fixing bugs:

Even if you are a perfect dev, ther could be tiny bugs in your code that you may have completely missed at first. A couple bug fixing tools that I really like are DoneDone (find alternatives here) and Zoho Bug Tracker. One important thing to keep in mind as a remote worker, is “In a remote setting, your source of truth is detailed and accurate documentation. This includes as many details as possible about how to reproduce the bug, fix deployed, specific comments on OS-related fixes, etc. Every stakeholder (Dev, QA, manager, etc.) should be cognizant of this and practice it religiously.” From this, it is seen that you will need the best in terms of documentation tools. Additor and Coda.io are options to consider which could serve your purpose well. For ace efficiency and successful code collaboration, a tool like Humble Dot is well known and trusted tool. Find similar tools on this page.

Managing a project:

As a project manager, you would know that you have to take utmost care of the minor details as well as the bigger picture on every project. Among some of the responsibilities of the project manager are the smooth fucntioning and the delivery. To start with, you would need a repository service that works well. Either GitHub or GitLab are great choices. You can check their differences here and decide between them. Good project management tools deliver amazingly in terms of organization, scheduling, collaboration and data-driven analytics features. Check out management tools such as Avion for user story mapping in agile teams; Hassl to combine everything into one app; Teamweek for planning simple and structured timelines; and Pivotal Tracker to prioritize and smartly manage projects. Also do your part in ensuring your team performs well. Some tools that are great for this purpose are Retorio — to help your team identify strong and weak areas and work together and Spyrix dashboard — a tool which lets you track any sort of user activity. You can also find some alternatives to the latter here. When hiring a new developer for your remote team, try Shield GEO to employ remote workers overseas in a compliant manner.

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