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Being a developer isn’t an easy job and you need to keep a constant eye for the ever evolving scenarios around you. There are in fact a lot of things that you need to keep in mind while you develop your next project for a client or company. The first amongst these is the set of languages that you might use to write the program. Added to it, there are a set of tools that you can use to check for software development while these help you streamline your working experience. Before we begin with understanding the 15 best tools for developers in 2021, it is important that we begin with understand in detail about the life cycle of software development.
Software Development Life Cycle
Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is used to facilitate a systematic, well-defined, and cost-effective development of a large software product. SDLC is an information system that goes through several stages from conception to implementation of a product. Each stage of an SDLC consists of definite entry and exit criteria. The software development life-cycle can be divided into 5-9 phases, i.e., it must have a minimum of five phases and a maximum of nine phases. On average it has seven to eight phases.
For an SDLC phase to begin the corresponding phase-entry criteria should be achieved. Similarly, a phase can be considered complete only when the appropriate exit criteria is met.
Source: Infinity Science – Software Engineering and Testing an Introduction by B.B. Agarwal, S.P. Tayal, M. Gupta.
List of SDLC phases
Feasibility A feasibility study is primarily a study that investigates users’ requirements and evaluates the resource required for a proposed project such as costs, benefits, and feasibility. The purpose of feasibility studies is to assess alternative systems and recommend the most feasible and desirable systems for development.
Project Evaluation Project analysis refers to a detailed study of the various operations performed by a system and their inter-relationships with the outside environment. A detailed investigation should be carried out in this phase with personnel who are intimately familiar with the area under investigation according to initial study reports.
Design of the System: The most intuitive and challenging phase of SDLC is system design. The term system design refers to the major framework and process, which is required to make a system operational.
Coding: The coding phase converts the system’s design into code in a specific programming language. The goal of this phase is to implement the design in the best way possible so that it can operate in harmony with the runtime environment. This phase has an impact on both the testing and maintenance phases. A well-formulated code can help to reduce testing and maintenance time. The main emphasis of the coding phase is to create programs, which are easy to read, and understandable by machines on which they are simulated.
Testing: Testing is regarded as a primary quality-control measure in software development. Its primary function is to detect software errors. The primary aim of testing is to discover design and coding flaws in a software program. Testing is an important time-consuming activity. It requires careful planning of the overall testing process. The specified test cases are executed during unit testing where the actual results are compared to the desired output. A test report and the error report are the final outputs of the testing phase. Each test report contains the set of test cases and the result of executing the code with these test cases. The error report describes the errors that were encountered as well as the steps taken to correct them.
Implementation: It is final testing of the entire system, which ensures user satisfaction, as well as supervision of the system’s initial operation.
Maintenance: It is an essential component of the SDLC. If there is an error, which is bypassed during testing, it is corrected during the maintenance phase. Software maintenance is also an important aspect of software development. Maintenance may frequently consume more time than development.
Importance of SDLC
- It aids in understanding the entire software development process
- It enforces a structured approach to product development
- It enables the advanced planning of resources
- It helps in tracking system progress
Software design
The process of creating and selecting programs that meet the objectives of software systems is known as software design. The overall scope of system design should be by the design specifications. These specifications are addressed as the designer refines his software representation.
Software quality assurance
The goal of Software Quality Assurance in software development is to create high-quality software. Software Quality Assurance is a set of activities, which assess the process of developing software. A software quality assurance ensures that the procedures and techniques used during software development are sufficient to provide the desired level of quality in the work products.
15 Software development tools in 2021
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Microsoft Visual Studio
Microsoft Visual Studio is one of the traditional developer tools, which allows writing code faster and more accurately. Its simple navigation helps the user to resolve any warnings and suggestions with a single click. Debugging previously written code while pausing current execution is one of its exciting features. Visual Studio also helps the user to track the implemented changes. By using this tool a user can access authors, history, tests, and other important information.
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Xcode
Apple’s Xcode is one of the frequently used developer tools available in the market today. It allows you to write code with a professional code editor, which, facilitates advanced code completion and syntax highlighting. It also helps with error troubleshooting by displaying warnings, errors, and other important information with a message bubble based on the user’s code. Using the primary code editor, you can quickly access any file in your workspace.
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LT Browser
LT Browser by LambdaTest is a desktop based application that helps users to test and debug their website on 50+ device viewports. With LT Browser users can check responsiveness of their website on mobile, tablet and desktop devices. Perform side by side testing on two devices, improve their website performance with google lighthouse based performance report, test on different network conditions and even mark bugs and share them via 100+ integrations.
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LambdaTest
LambdaTest offers live interactive and automated cross browser testing on across 2000+ live browsers and OS online. The platform helps developers perform interactive cross browser testing of your public and locally hosted websites and webapps on across 2000+ desktop and mobile browsers. LambdaTest allows you to run your Selenium test automation scripts across a grid of android mobiles, laptops and iOS browsers.
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Firefox Developer Tools
Firefox Developer Tools features cross-platform compatibility and works on multiple Operating Systems, including Windows, Linux, and macOS. It is one of the best developer tools because it allows users to debug HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on their desktop or mobile device. It consists of a Page Inspector feature, which allows users to view and edit the content and layout of a page. It also features message tracking which helps users to view messages logged by a web page and interact with them using JavaScript.
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Facebook for Developer
Facebook’s Developer tools aid in the testing, creation and authentication of API (application program interface) calls. Its Debugger tool is one of their widely used developer tools which allows users to see the formatting of their website content when shared on Facebook and Messenger. Using these tools, users can view information about a specific access token for anyone who logs into their website or app via Facebook.
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Chrome DevTools
Chrome DevTools, a set of one of the best developer tools, which are built into Google Chrome. These tools can assist the user in editing pages and debugging issues. It also allows users to quickly create visually appealing websites. These tools are efficient in helping users to debug CSS and JavaScript. Users can also perform a variety of functions that will assist them in increasing their productivity.
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Oracle JDeveloper
Oracle JDeveloper is compatible with multiple operating systems such as Windows, Linux, macOS, etc. It is one of the developer tools which provides cross-platform solutions. Oracle JDeveloper Studio and Oracle JDeveloper Java are the two editions of the platform.
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Atom
Atom is a free-to-use open-source editor that is used as an alternative to Sublime Text. It is user-friendly and can be customized. The interface is compatible with most operating systems and consists of auto-complete features that allow quick coding without typographical errors. Atom’s editor contains multiple panes, which makes it easy to compare and edit test programs, while its search and replace features improve usability and navigation.
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Linux
Linux is a development platform that allows programmers to concentrate on designing the user interface end of an application. The tool consists of a lot of plugins that provide diverse functionality. Linux provides extensive usage of drag and drop functionality, which avoids redundant developing tasks. It makes it easier to develop business applications by connecting to SQL databases and can easily access databases and files from one application and translate them to another user.
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GitHub
GitHub is an essential tool for any software developer that makes managing and tracking the progress of each developer working on a project a lot easier. It is a collaborative tool with code-sharing functionality. GitHub contains a coding repository, which is one of its exciting features.
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NetBeans
NetBeans is an integrated development environment (IDE) for C++, HTML, Java, and PHP. It is programmed in Java and allows the creation of web and mobile applications. Auto code completion eliminates the need for tedious coding. Software testing and debugging allow the developer to code free with errors. Its simple editing feature makes it very dependable.
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Bootstrap
Bootstrap is a framework used to optimize JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Its primary responsibility is to make a website user-friendly and web-optimized. It has a plethora of plugins with drag-and-drop functionality to make coding less complex.
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Spiralogics
It is a software development tool that facilities i-cloud functionalities to coders. Spiralogics have a personalized UI that supports the creation of web and mobile applications through the use of drag-and-drop functionality. It allows the developer to preview the final version of the software before publishing it. It is an excellent tool for developing cross-platform software.
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CodeLobster
It is a free PHP-based IDE that supports HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Plugins allow CodeLobster to be used with content management systems such as Drupal and WordPress. It consists of HTML/CSS code inspectors that are very convenient and efficient. It also allows debugging of PHP HTML DOM elements of the software.
Conclusion
Software developers go by varying needs. Often the most expensive tool is not the most resourceful. We believe LambdaTest is the most reliable tool that developers benefit the most out of. It is simply something one cannot do in absence of. The popularity of front-end tools for web development is also on the rise due to the ever-changing web technologies. We hope this list meets your requirements and your queries. You can perform your automation testing with the free testing option of LambdaTest software. The tool will guide you through Cross Browser Testing for desktop and mobile browsers, across different user conditions and device types with a seamless collaboration across all platforms and user conditions.