Top 20 Web Development Tools in 2020

Web-Development field is expanding with astonishing speed, and every year Developers introduce some new tools and technologies which accelerate it even faster. Most of the tech giants started their billion-dollars business with web Earlier there were a limited number of users, but now with improved technologies, we have billions of active web-users, and to maintain and introduce old and new tools and technologies over the web we have thousands of web-developers.

Because of the user demands and web-threats new technologies introduce to the web every year, which makes web-development easier, more user interactive and secure. Unlike other software development in Computer Science, in web-development we have a large number of libraries, programming languages, frameworks, and some pre-build tools which can be used by web-developers to create web-applications, for instance, you can visit Netflix, Facebook, and Spotify on the same web-browser, but all these websites using different technologies for back-end as well as for frontend.

As there are many tools used in web-development you do not need to learn all of those just learn two or three tools, which include tools for both front-end as well as back-end and you are good to go for a web-development job interview. There are thousands of organizations that heir web-developers, so look for those organizations who are looking web-development traits that you acquire.

Web-development is just not about learning a specific language, it might be possible that the web-development language you learned get outdated in one or three years because in web-development tools and technologies are not stable, they get change with time, so you keep need to update your web skills with time.

Let’s discuss the top 20 tools that you can use in 2020 to improve your web-development skills:

Text Editors

As a developer, the first thing you require to write code is a Text Editor, for web-development text-editors always give priority over IDEs (Integrated Development Environment), because they are light-weight and we do not require any specific compiler or interpreter to run our code. The only tools we require is a text editor to write code and a Web-Browser to execute our code, however, for some back-end tools, we also require our terminal to create localhost.

1. Sublime Text Editor

Sublime is one of the most popular Text Editor, it provides you with code editing features for more than 20 programming languages, which include all the popular ones. It is free to use software and it also provides you with a very interactive user interface. It comes with multiple themes and a developer can customize the themes according to his/her choice.

It is a very light-weighted application that is easy to use and even low-end computers with low specifications can run Sublime text editor very smoothly. It provides all the important features such as Syntax highlighting, Auto-Correction, special plugin, build-in console, etc.

2. Atom Code Editor

Many developers prefer Atom over sublime because it is developed by GitHub and it also provides more features than Sublime. However, Atom is new to the code-editor market but it already has gained too much popularity among the developer community.

In 2014 GitHub release Atom in the market and by now it has a huge community. Atom also provides support for multiple programming languages, and it comprises many packages which also include the GitHub package, which helps you to save or commit any change on your GitHub repository using Atom.

Like Sublime Atom is also an Open Source light-weighted software, which is available for all the popular Operating Systems. It has many plugins and extensions which helps to increase the productivity of a developer. Although Atom provides you with 8 syntax themes in both dark and light colors, you can also install themes created by the atom community.

3. Notepad++

Notepad++ editor is named after notepad software and it is also a popular Text Editor, more like it is a classical text editor, and like other text editors it also covers almost every programming language. It is built on C++ and simplicity is its main asset. With notepad++ you can easily shift from one file to another.

4. Visual Studio Code

It is a cross-platform source-code editor, created by Microsoft. It comes with many features such as code debugging, embedded Git control, GitHub, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, and code refactoring.

It has many customizations features too which allow users to change the editor theme and you can also define shortcut keys for the editor itself. You can also install extra extensions in your code editor for additional functionalities.

Web-frameworks

A web-framework is a collection of several modules and libraries which is used to create web-applications. Web-Frameworks contains pre-written code so while building a web-application you do not require to write code from scratch, instead, we use the framework prewritten code and build new applications. These days developers use frameworks rather than writing core code in from scratch, however, all these frameworks depend on specific programming languages, which means you need to learn the core programming language to work on a framework.

As the web-development is divided into two main ends, known as front-end and back-end, so developers have created various frameworks for both ends.

Front-End Web-Frameworks

1. Angular

Angular is one of the most popular front-end web frameworks, it is developed by Google and a large community of front-end developers has adapted angular for their web-projects. Initially, when Angular was released it would use JavaScript as its programming language but in 2016 Goole completely rewrite the Angular, and now Angular use Typescript as its programming language.

With Angular, we can create client-side dynamic webpages and google which created this web-framework itself using Angular for its various projects. Angular can be used to create cross-platform web-applications which include, web-apps for native mobile and desktop.

2. React.js

React is a JavaScript library developed by Facebook to create front-end web applications. However, react is not a web-framework but it can also be used to create web-applications, as it is supported by Facebook, it has gained a lot of popularity in a few years. It is also important because it is the perfect rival of Angular web-framework so if you are not a fan of angular you can go with React and as compared to angular it is easy to learn.

3. Vue.js

Vue.js is another popular JavaScript web-framework released in February 2014. Like React and Angular we can create dynamic, and interactive front-end web-applications using Vue.js. As it uses JavaScript as a programming language which makes Vue easy to learn and use.

Though Vue is not supported by any popular tech giant, yet it has gained a lot of popularity over a few years. If we look at its architecture it follows the MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) architecture, and it also provides you with better documentation.

4. Bootstrap

Bootstrap is an open-source beautiful and powerful CSS framework. It was released in 2011 and the current version of bootstrap is Bootstrap 4. Though Bootstrap is considered as a CSS framework, but it also contains HTML, JavaScript and jQuery script. With Bootstrap you can simply perform the copy and paste to create beautiful and interactive front-end pages.

5. Ember

Ember uses JavaScript as its programming language and in 2011 Ember released as a cross-platform JavaScript Framework. Ember can be used to create dynamic client-side applications, for desktop and mobiles.

Most professional developers use Ember for front-end applications. Ember follows the MVMM architecture like Vue.js, and many popular websites such as Apple Music, Square INC, Discourse, LinkedIn, Twitch, etc. have used ember for their User Interface Front End.

Back-End Frameworks

1. Django

Django is the most popular python framework; however, python has many web-frameworks and Django hold the number 1 position. It is an Open-Source web-framework and can be used to create dynamic web-application, with the release of Python 3.8 Django developer also introduced the new version of Django as Django3.

It has a very huge community and you can find thousands of Django projects on GitHub and Stack Overflow. Python itself is the most popular programming language of 2020 which helps Django to form a huge community.

As python is an easy language to learn, but this is not a case with Django, however, Django also provides you with lots of built-in features and well-organized documentation. With Django, you can build robust and high-quality applications.

2. Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails is one of the oldest players in the Back-end web framework. It uses Ruby as its programming language and there are more than 800,000 websites that are using Ruby on Rails for their backend support. Many popular websites such as Airbnb, GitHub, Hulu, Groupon, etc build on Ruby on Rails.

With the help of this framework, we can implement complex algorithms for web development, and even create cloud-based applications.

3. Laravel

Laravel is the perfect framework for PHP developers who want to update their PHP intermediate skills to the next level. As of PHP itself used to create back-end web-applications, but Laravel provides you with some PHP pre-written code that can increase a PHP developer's creativity.

Laravel comes with Model-View-Controller architecture, and its learning curve is also very low for those who have some knowledge of PHP.

4. Express.js

Node.js which is a JavaScript runtime environment helps JavaScript developers to create back-end web-applications. Express.js is a Node.js API and web development framework if you are a JavaScript Developer you can extend your front-end skills with backend using the Express.js framework.

Many Fortune 500 companies such as Uber, IBM, Accenture, etc. use the Express framework for their backend script. If you want to learn Express first you need to learn JavaScript and Node.js itself, and this makes Express.js learning curve high.

Package Managers:

While working on a web project we require different libraries, frameworks, programming languages, and other dependencies so to manages all these dependencies we use Package Managers. A package manager is a software tool that is used to install, configure, remove and upgrade the project dependencies.

1. NPM

NPM stands for Node Package Manager, and it is the default Package Manager for Node.js. It is powering more than 100,000 packages and modules. With NPM you can create a package.json file in your project and update and optimize all of your project dependencies from the terminal. If you want to be a web developer you must have the knowledge of NPM because mostly every organization uses NPM for their project, if you are a complete beginner you can go to the Reddit for an NPM beginner explanation.

2. pip

pip is the default package manager of Python, if you are a python developer or using Django or any other python web-framework for web-development you would be aware of pip and its usage. pip comes pre-install with python and using it you can install any Python package which is present at PyPI repository.

3. Yarn

Yarn is a new package manager by Facebook, in yarn Facebook has introduced a new workspace that combines with Lerna and it provides the developer with a powerful tool to manage all the dependencies of the project.

Git Clients

Git is popular version control and everyone uses it to tack the history of their project code. However, most of the git work is done with git terminal command, but now git also provide users with some GIT GUI clients and application to manage our project code.

1. GitHub Desktop

It is a software by GitHub which helps you to create and manage GitHub repository on your desktop. GitHub Desktop is currently available for macOS and Windows Operating Systems. If you do not like to work with git commands or terminal you can simply download GitHub desktop and use its interactive interface to commit and manage your GitHub repository.

2. GitKraken

GitKraken is an opensource cross-platform Git GUI client and as compare to GitHub desktop it is more interactive and beginner-friendly, and yet it contains all the advance functionality of git. It helps you to keep your git workflow clean with an interactive graphical interface.

API Testing tools

API stands for Application Programming Interface, and API testing tools are the software which is used to test the quality of the API and the tool check whether the API stands on all the expectation or there are some shortcomings in that API.

1. SoapUI

With SoapUI we can test any REST and SOAP API very quickly and it also provides the Drag and Drop and Point-and-Click option for testing.

2. Postman

Postman counts in one of the best API testing tools. It is released as an API workflow in testing and development by Abhinav Asthana. Now more than 8 million developers, use this testing tool to check the standard of their API’s.

Conclusion

These are the tools that you can use in 2020 if you want to be a web-developer. You do not require to learn all these tools, just go with one tool of each section, and always try to upgrade your skills with the treading technology.

We hope you like this article, if you have any suggestion related to it please let us know by filling the comment box.