20 free developer tools we loved in 2020 😍

My name is Joe, and I am the co-founder of Budibase. I have built many apps in the past, which, I guess is why I am building a platform that builds apps super-quickly and easily. In the last year, the following tools have helped me, and my team a lot. As a way of showing gratitude, I thought I'd share these tools with like-minded people, and hopefully, they can help you too.

This is an opinionated list and there are possibly better tools out there. If you know a better alternative, please comment below. We'd love to add more tools to our arsenal, and it's nice, for the makers of these tools, to feel appreciated.

Design

1. Figma
   Figma a vector graphics editor and prototyping tool which is primarily web-based, with additional offline features enabled by desktop applications for macOS and Windows. I actually prefer Adobe XD for designing UIs but Figma's collaboration and extensibility give it the edge as a team-based design tool.
   Open source: No.

2. Remix icons
   Remix Icon is a set of open-source neutral-style system symbols elaborately crafted for designers and developers. All of the icons are free for both personal and commercial use.
   Open source: Yes
   Github repo

Building websites

3. Hugo
   Hugo is a static site generator written in Go. It is one of the most popular open-source static site generators. With its amazing speed and flexibility, Hugo is a great SSG for newcomers to web development.
   Open source: Yes
   Github repo

4. Eleventy
   Eleventy is a "simpler static site generator". Eleventy is more flexible than Hugo, and in some ways more powerful, but, in my opinion, it's not as quick or as simple to use. It's a great, lightweight alternative to Gatsby.
   Open source: Yes
   Github repo

Building web apps

5. Budibase
   Budibase is an open-source visual development platform for designing, building, and deploying real custom software 50x faster. As previously mentioned, I am the co-founder of Budibase. We released Budibase to beta 6 weeks ago, and we've had 2,000 users and over 1,900 apps created, and over 500 deployed!
   Open source: Yes
   Github repo

6. Next.js
   Next.js is an open-source React front-end development web framework that enables functionality such as server-side rendering and generating static websites for React-based web applications.
   Open source: Yes
   Github repo

Database

7. Postico
   Postico provides an easy to use interface, making Postgres more accessible for newcomers and specialists alike. Postico will look familiar to anyone who has used a Mac before. Just connect to a database and begin working with tables and views.

Bundler/build tools

8. Snowpack
   Snowpack is a lightning-fast frontend build tool, designed for the modern web. It is an alternative to heavier, more complex bundlers like Webpack or Parcel in your development workflow. Snowpack leverages JavaScript's native module system (known as ESM) to avoid unnecessary work and stay fast no matter how big your project grows.
   Open source: Yes
   Github repo

9. Webpack
   Webpack is an open-source JavaScript module bundler. It is made primarily for JavaScript, but it can transform front-end assets such as HTML, CSS, and images if the corresponding loaders are included. Webpack takes modules with dependencies and generates static assets representing those modules.
   Open source: Yes
   Github repo

APIs

10. Postman
    Postman makes API development easy. The platform offers the tools to simplify each step of the API building process and streamlines collaboration so you can create better APIs faster.

CI/CD

11. Github Actions
    GitHub Actions makes it easy to automate all your software workflows, now with world-class CI/CD. Build, test, and deploy your code right from GitHub.

Hosting

12. Vercel
    Deploy web projects with the best frontend developer experience and highest end-user performance.

13. Netlify
    Deploy modern static websites with Netlify. Get CDN, Continuous deployment, 1-click HTTPS, and all the services you need. Get started for free.

14. Portainer
    Portainer makes managing containerized software environments quick and easy by giving users a simple 'click-to-configure' UI that anyone can learn.

Performance

15. Screaming frog
    The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a website crawler that helps you improve onsite SEO, by extracting data & auditing for common SEO issues. The SEO Spider is really powerful, able to crawl both small and very large websites efficiently while allowing you to analyze the results in real-time. It gathers key onsite data to allow SEOs to make informed decisions. It runs locally too and is pretty performant. This tool can do a lot more than I've described, and I advise you to give it a go.

DevRel

16. Orbit
    Orbit is the community experience platform for developers, helping organizations build enthusiastic communities of technology adopters. We've recently started using Orbit and it is very early in its journey but the signs of a great platform are there. I'm excited to see where this goes.

17. Github Discussions
    Github Discussions is currently in beta. We've been using it at Budibase for a few months now and it's been great. Our community is loving it too. It's nice to have an open-source community so close to the code and roadmap.

Terminal

18. Oh my zsh
    Oh My Zsh is a delightful, open-source, community-driven framework for managing your Zsh configuration. It comes bundled with thousands of helpful functions, helpers, plugins, and themes. This developer tool is loved and hugely popular amongst our devs.
    Open source: Yes
    Github repo

19. Guake
    Guake is a top-down terminal for Gnome, and is highly inspired by the famous terminal used in Quake. You can instantaneously show and hide your terminal with a single keystroke, execute a command, and then go back to your previous task without breaking your workflow. It's a really nice experience and another terminal which is popular amongst the Budibase devs.
    Open source: Yes
    Github repo

Content

20. Dev.to
    What more can I say, what a great platform for sharing technical information with like-minded individuals.

And that's the wrap folks. I hope you enjoyed the list, and please let me know in the comments if I have missed any awesome tools. Thank you, and have a great day!

Joe