Unfortunately, in the world of software development, burnout is common, thanks to scope creep and increasing pressure on developers to create quicker. Chances are your burnout story or experience is hardly unique in a field as fast-paced as software development. The demand for software developers in the U.S has been increasing over the years as businesses increasingly experience digital transformation. And this places higher and higher demands on the experienced developers in the industry.
Here’s the common software developer journey:
- Start a development project or your programming career with much enthusiasm
- Collaborate on projects and successfully build applications for clients
- Get overwhelmed or feel drained by application support issues and requests
- Dread at the thought of handling the next project or going back to work tomorrow
- Burn out and think about walking away
Developer burnout is real and can be due to monotony, icky coworkers, lack of reward and recognition, excessive working hours, interruptions, performing tasks you don’t enjoy, or having little control over your work. The good news is that there are productivity tools you can use to keep track of your tasks and time, collaborate and communicate with your team, share information, and stay motivated. These tools are designed to help you stay focused to avoid getting stuck and burnout.
JFrog
Software development is no longer just about in-house programming. The emergence of free open-source software, commercial libraries, and in-house proprietary libraries has helped transform the industry over the past several years. Build and automation tools such as Ivy, Gradle, and Maven have also contributed to this transformation. Though this has helped improve code quality and reduce costs, developers still experience challenges when it comes to the management of binaries and artifacts.
JFrog has developed a universal artifact management DevOps platform that provides a solution for managing software binaries and artifacts across your organization or enterprise. JFrog Artifactory gives you the freedom to integrate your monitoring tools, manage deployment infrastructure, and package managers with a Helm repository, thereby boosting productivity across your software development ecosystem.
Git
You probably have already heard about Git and how it can help in source code management. Originally developed in 2005, Git is an open-source distributed version control system that makes collaboration on projects easier. It’s the most widely used version control system today. Whether you’re a web developer who writes code that no one else can see, or collaborate with others in your team, this version control system will be useful.
As a developer, whenever you’re working on a project, you have to keep making changes to the code or files until you get to the final version. Git helps in tracking all the changes you make, allowing other developers to collaborate, contribute, and make changes. If you’re working with someone else on the same file or project, you can work on different parts and later run a command to merge the changes.
The Silver Searcher
The Silver Searcher is one of the must-have productivity tools for software developers. It’s a source code searching tool designed to help developers find specific code in an easy and faster way. You know how frustrating it can be when your IDE’s search capabilities are very slow and you can’t seem to find what you’re looking for. The free and open-source tool is similar to ack but about 34 times faster in displaying results. Plus, it gives you more specific matches. If you’re one of those people who love reading and searching through their code base, then this tool can save your time as well as your sanity.
F.lux
It’s not uncommon for developers to have crunch periods where they work long hours into the evenings and during weekends. There’s doubt excessive working hours can lead to job dissatisfaction and burnout among developers. But even those who want to code responsibly experience some difficulty when it comes to staying productive. And this is because the bright light from your computer display can be irritable to your eyes, thereby impacting your alertness and focus.
F.lux is a cross-platform tool designed to adjust the color temperature of your computer display based on the time of day and your location. You can customize the light levels and color temperature to match your current environment or work routine. The program helps reduce eye fatigue and ensures you stay alert when working on your programming tasks. The program works on Linix, Mac, Windows, and iOS devices, and is easy to install. If you’re looking to improve your productivity and alertness and maintain healthy sleeping patterns, F.lux may help you out.
Clockify
Clockify is a project management tool designed to help you and your team track productivity and work hours across development projects. The free time tracking solution allows you to specify the time needed for each development project, view ongoing tasks, track your team’s hourly rates, and see time breakdown for different activities. Whether you’re a freelance developer working independently or you work on a team, this time management tool will be useful. It features a beautiful and highly intuitive user interface, and is very easy to use. The tool will help you track your time and find out how productive you are daily, weekly, or monthly.
