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9 must-know open-source tools that will make you better than 99% of developers

Nevo David on October 08, 2024

The software development landscape is evolving faster than ever. To stay ahead of the curve, you must arm yourself with tools and technologies buil...
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Christophe Avonture

Your post didn't target php so, OK, you've not mentioned one of the best tool for PHP : Rectorphp getrector.com/.

Rector will scan your code (without running it) and will suggest tons of improvements, new way of writing code.

One of best open source tool I ever know

@tomasvotruba

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Miller Twain

2 years into changing careers to Dev, specifically php and the laravel framework, maybe you can create a post about tools surrounding php? Would love to read

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Nevo David

I have abandoned PHP around five years ago :)
I don't have a lot of recommendations.
For me PHP is a dying language, it exists only because of Wordpress.

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Mahesh Sankhala

Bro you can believe whatever you want but data related to php doesn't support your opinion.

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Mahesh Sankhala

Great list. Thanks for sharing.

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Nevo David

If you can give me one reason why I would use PHP compared to the alternative on a new project (judging the language, not projects like Laravel, WordPress or Drupal)
I might change my mind.

❌ Async
❌ Slow
❌ Hard installation

I also use WordPress as a CMS for my website. But it's not because of the "language" it's because it's a good project.

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Mahesh Sankhala

Often many people have this impression of php as dying language but it has evolved much.
Just one reason I can give you is that It has async now. Just Google it and you will know.
In terms of performance it has improved alot after php8.
It is not hard to install any more. Many package managers installs it with single command. Or you can use docker images for preconfigured php env.

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Nevo David

Async is not supported natively in PHP.
It is still an interpreter language, so you open a process for every request.
I agree that PHP8 is faster but still not comparable to modern languages.
I dare you to go and render a full video in PHP - see how fast you get a memory allocation error :)

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Steve

Most uses of php use php-fpm, which will NOT start a new process per request. It will spawn a bunch of processes that will handle multiple requests in separate threads and scale up/down as far as process count goes depending on the traffic and configuration. This has been the standard for years now

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Denys Bochko

I read already one post on how php is being reborn so I am going to voice my opinion here as there is already a thread about this. I have nothing against php (heck I have used it as my main language for the past 20 years), but I think the tech is being moved into microservice oriented architecture and php is not cut for it.

One of the main problems with php is that it's a monolithic language, you can't separate frontend and backend into two services as they both need to run on the server. In short, if your server goes down so does your application.
You can try to use it as an API point, of course, but none of the cloud providers support it to be serverless since php is not a pure server language but a pre processor.

The core php function is to execute statements one after another and wait for that execution to finish (I got very surprised when I found out that JS runs differently and does not wait), so if you have an issue with your call, app dies... There is still no async in php, I am thinking due to how it was built.

A lot of people are exited about strong types in parameters and return type for functions. I don't think I ever had an issue with that and to me it looks like just making it inline with other languages (not a big deal). You should write comments, and work in IDE, so you will always know what types of parameters a function takes and what it returns.
It does seem like they are trying to align php with what other languages are doing: anonymous functions, strong types, changing array() into [].

Earlier I read that 86% of the websites are still using php, true, but what kind of websites? wordpress, drupal and all other CMSs. I believe if you look into the sites that use custom data and are heavy on calculations, graphs or anything custom, you will not find a lot of those CMSs doing that.

Last but not least, look at the job market, which is the best indication of trend out there. For the past 6 month, there is only a 10% of jobs are php related with even senior roles not getting a good salary. I could say a niche market, but niche market usually has a good salary match.

Conclusion. PHP is good for people who know it and use it, however, the technology is moving into microservice world. The fact that none of the cloud providers have php in their serverless offerings, while having most of the other languages, speaks for itself.
I am moving to Python and Vue or React, should be fun.

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Nevo David

Not a big php fan, but nice repository!

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Christophe Avonture

If you are interested by a first how to for Rector, i've written this article months ago : avonture.be/blog/php-rector

You'll read a very basic and very short php code, something like everyone can code. Then you'll see how Rector will transform my "I've always code like that" to a much better code, state of the art.

I'm a big fan, yes.

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Meaghan DeGroot • Edited

Tired of “the best” inline code editors. Yawn . Give me a valid reason why they are different other than they have sponsored you. Don’t mention GitHub copilot or I’ll reach out and smack you

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Melody Mbewe

A great collection of libraries. Thank you for putting this together

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Nevo David

❤️

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tim brandom

Nice Compilation, I will also add Zod for Typescript devs.

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Nevo David

Thank you so much!
Zod is great!

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Rym

and Taipy

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Nevo David

The best!

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Martin Baun

Copolitkit is pretty cool! No more externally creating your own services.

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Nevo David

It is!

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Sunil Kumar Dash

Great list, thanks.

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Nevo David

Thank you!

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Greg, The JavaScript Whisperer

This is cool article great links, you gotta take the second you just know out the title though... Please!

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Nathan Tarbert

Hey Nevo, great list.
I already feel smarter ;)
Thanks for including CopilotKit!!!!

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Nevo David

Thank you fo reading!

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Asaba William

Thank you

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Nevo David

Thank you for reading!

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Erik Lindvall

Cool, thanks! I am def going to check out Continue.

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Nevo David

Awesome!

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viralsweet

Nice info man

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Nevo David

Thank you!

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Koushik Roy

Can you review my npm package?

npmjs.com/package/xytro.js

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Anis Mer_

Thanks for sharing, Nevo. It's very helpful! I'm going to try a few of them.

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Nevo David

Awesome!

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johnwings21

Great list of libraries.

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Nevo David

Thank you so much!

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Alexhales67

Really nice resources, thanks for sharing.

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Nevo David

Thank you for reading :)

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John Bolton

Insightful ✌️ You can read our blogs on how to contribute in open-source projects A to Z tutorial: stories-of-purnota-ne9b.vercel.app...
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nasoma

Every developer building web apps with less than 100K users says "PHP is slow", "PHP does not support async". Web dev is now a cult.

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Berry Esther

This article highlights nine open-source tools that can supercharge your development game. From code quality to project management, these gems promise to boost your skills beyond 99% of developers! It’s like having a secret weapon in your coder arsenal. For those moments when you need a little extra info, google is your trusty sidekick, ready to help you dig deeper into each tool.