Useful Resources and Tools
Tags: programming, tools, utilities, productivity
Published: 2018-02-27 22:07:07

---
title: Useful Resources and Tools
published: true
description: I've compiled some useful resources for devloping
tags: programming, tools, utilities, productivity
cover_image: https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/h0hblfepnzev39rjgkyv.png
canonical_url: https://www.gunnargissel.com/pages/useful-resources-and-tools.html
---

_Originally published at [www.gunnargissel.com](https://www.gunnargissel.com/pages/useful-resources-and-tools.html)_

I collect useful resources for software development here - how to do it and tools to do it with

Expect periodic updates

Tools
========

Writing Tools
--------------

* [Hemingway App](http://www.hemingwayapp.com/)
  * Hemingway App is a great website (or app!) that helps pare down your writing into direct, adverb-less prose.  I like it as an editing tool, although I take it with a grain of salt because I prefer my writing to be a touch more florid than Hemingway
* [Swagger RESTful API documentation tools](http://swagger.io/swagger-ui/)
  * If you have a RESTful API, you ought to document it.  Since you're documenting it on the web, why not make the documentation talk to your API?  Swagger makes it easy to write the docs, and it makes the docs incredibly useful by automatically creating a way for readers to interact with your API

Editors
----------

* [Atom](https://atom.io/)
    * Atom is a javascript text editor that works on the web and on the desktop.  It has a ton of plugins and can very nearly hold its own as a full IDE.  I like how you can integrate the command line into Atom, and how its syntax highlighting is pretty good
* [Notepad++](https://notepad-plus-plus.org/)
    * Notepad++ has been an old standby of my Windows development.  It has tabs!  It has multi-cursor editing!  It has rudimentary syntax highlighting!  It opens big files pretty quickly!  It has macros!  What more can you ask for?

Useful Windows Tools
-----------------------

* [RapidEE](https://www.rapidee.com/en/about)
    * RapidEE makes managing environment variables on Windows a great deal more tolerable.  It shows both system and user environment variables, and most importantly, highlights paths that are broken.
* [putty](https://putty.org/)
    * For the time being, if you want ssh on Windows, putty is the place to go.  Hopefully this changes for future versions of Windows.
* [smarTTY](https://smartty.sysprogs.com/)
    * smarTTY is a friendlier ssh client for Windows.  It allows for tabbed sessions, remembers servers you've connected to, and can handle doing key exchanges automatically.  It can't do everything - if you need to authenticate with a CAC card, you'r stuck with putty.
* [7-zip](http://www.7-zip.org/)
    * 7-zip unzips just about anything
* [Cygwin](https://www.cygwin.com/)
    * If you are on Windows, aren't aren't in an organization that lets you use the super sweet Linux subsystem, Cygwin is the next best thing.
* [Chocolatey](https://chocolatey.org/)
    * Windows' missing package manager.  It brings some of the pizzazz of apt-get or npm to Windows.

Drawing Tools
------------------

* [Inkscape](https://inkscape.org/)
   * Vector art tool - sometimes you want an svg, but you don't want to pony up for Illustrator.  Inkscape has your back
* [Gimp](https://www.gimp.org/)
   * Gimp isn't as good as photoshop, but for editing pictures, resizing stuff and photoshopping two images together, it is good enough.
* [Graphviz](http://graphviz.org/)
   * Easy graphs!  Not the regular kind of graphs, but the mathematical kind of interrelated nodes.  My main beef is that it doesn't always order the nodes the way I want, but it gets the job done.

Websites
============

* [dev.to](https://dev.to) :)
    * dev.to is a great website for general programming articles.  It has an incredibly welcoming community, and 
* [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com)
    * Hacker News is so-so on community, IMHO, but is still a very good place to find the big headlines and fads of the tech world
* [Lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs)
    * Lobsters is invite only, very similar to HN, but with a smaller less annoying community
* [IndieHackers](https://www.indiehackers.com)
    * IndieHackers is for smalltimers trying to make money on the internet, like me, and maybe you!  They are a very friendly and encouraging community

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credits
----------

Thank you [Andrew Fogg](https://www.flickr.com/photos/ndrwfgg/) for the picture of [tools](https://flic.kr/p/6t59b)