In order to build websites, apps or API's, every developer ultimately ends up curating a suite of tools that can help them build products better, cheaper and faster. Below are a few tools that I use all the time.
API Development
- Postman - Google Chrome plug-in that helps you craft CRUD requests
- PAW for Mac - Paw is like Postman
but for Mac users who prefer nice design. I love PAW. - RedBot - Redbot helps you figure out what your headers are returning.
- Mashape - Mashable is a marketplace for API-only services. If you ever want to make money from the service your API offers, this is it.
- Amazon Lambda - Amazon Lambda is a game changer. You can write a single method, host it on Lambda and let Amazon manage everything else. No need for servers, no need to worry about scaling, it's a big deal.
NodeJS Development
Research
- BuiltWith lets you find out what a website is built with by a simple click.
- IP address and domain information
- Web Developer's Toolbar - Probably the best toolbar in the marketplace.
- Clear Cache - Clear your cache and browsing data with a single click of a button.
- Crumble - If you want to see which websites inject cookies, this app does a pretty good job of that.
- JSON Formatter - JSON Formatter is a great tool for visually seeing your JSON data in the browser.
Measurement
- Google Analytics Debugger
- Google Tag Assistant
- Pagespeed
- Speed Test - Webpage Test will help you determine if your browser is hitting a cached page as well as other performance tests.
Base 64 Image
SSL
IDE
- Visual Studio Code
- Textmate
- Navicat Data Modeler is great for creating database models.
- Navicat Premium is perfect for managing MySQL or even AWS Aurora databases.
File Transfer
- Transmit is a tool for using FTP, SFTP and AWS S3.
- SSH Tunnel
- Secure Shell
Communication
- Chrome Remote Desktop for screen sharing.
- Apple Remote Desktop for Apple screen sharing and client monitoring.
- Zoom.us for video conferencing.
- Uber Conference for team phone calls.
- Slack for team sharing.
Time Management
Saving Code in the Cloud
- .gitignore - This website helps you easily create a gitignore file.
- Github for team collaboration.
- Bitbucket for team collaboration with free private repos.
- Codepen for sharing quick, front-end development.
- JS Bin for sharing quick, front-end development.
- Codepen
- Gistbox
Cloud Hosting
- Firebase for JSON-based, NoSQL real-time hosting. It's also great for Angular apps.
- Openshift is great for NodeJS and Ruby on Rails.
- Heroku is excellent for NodeJS, Rails and other apps that also want to integrate with PostgreSQL.
- Amazon Web Services is all powerful.
- Microsoft Azure is Microsoft's response to Amazon Web Services.
- Google Cloud Platform is Google's response to Amazon Web Services.
- AWS S3 Hosting is one solution to hosting a Single Page Web app using S3. This is a really affordable way to host your app.



Swift: Do Try Catch
I've discovered that there are really two ways to accomplish a Try/Catch strategy in Swift. The first example is technically correct but the "shorthand" example gives you...
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