The Developer Tools I Actually Use (And You Probably Need Too)
Being a developer means dealing with tons of text manipulation tasks. Here are the online tools that save me hours every week, from encoding URLs to cleaning up messy data.
The Developer Tools I Actually Use (And You Probably Need Too)
Yesterday I spent 15 minutes manually fixing spaces in a JSON file that got mangled when I copied it from Slack. Fifteen minutes of my life I'll never get back, doing something a computer should handle in seconds.
If you're a developer, you know this feeling. You're constantly dealing with messy text - API responses that need formatting, log files that need parsing, URLs that need encoding, code that needs cleaning up. It's not the fun part of development, but it's unavoidable.
The Problem with Text in Development
Here's what I deal with regularly:
- User input: Needs to be sanitized and encoded before displaying
- API responses: Often poorly formatted and need cleaning up
- Log files: Huge walls of text that need to be parsed
- Code formatting: Different teams, different indentation standards
- URLs: Special characters that break everything if not properly encoded
Most of the time, I used to handle this stuff manually or write one-off scripts. Not efficient.
The Tools That Actually Save Me Time
After years of dealing with this stuff, here are the tools I use most often:
HTML Encoding/Decoding - For When Users Break Everything
You know how users always find ways to enter characters that break your app? Last week someone entered <script>alert('hi')</script> in a feedback form and it actually executed. Fun times.
HTML encoding converts those dangerous characters into safe entities:
<becomes<>becomes>&becomes&
I use this anytime I'm displaying user content or need to show code snippets on a webpage without the browser trying to execute them.
Real example: Had to display code examples in our documentation. Without encoding, the browser tried to run the JavaScript examples. With encoding, they display as text.
URL Encoding - Because URLs Hate Spaces
Ever tried to pass a string with spaces in a URL parameter? It breaks. URLs don't understand spaces, ampersands, or most special characters.
URL encoding converts these into percent-encoded characters:
- Space becomes
%20 &becomes%26#becomes%23
Real example: Building a search feature where users can search for "user & admin". Without encoding, the URL breaks at the &. With encoding, it works perfectly.
Stripping HTML Tags - For When Copy-Paste Goes Wrong
You copy some text from a webpage for testing, paste it into your code, and suddenly you have a bunch of <div>, <span>, and <p> tags mixed in. Annoying.
The HTML strip tool removes all that markup and gives you just the text content.
Real example: Needed to extract product descriptions from a competitor's site for comparison. Copied the text, but it came with all the HTML formatting. Strip tool cleaned it up instantly.
Tabs vs Spaces - The Eternal Debate
Your team uses spaces, but the code you just copied uses tabs. Or vice versa. Instead of manually converting, just run it through the converter.
I probably use this more than I should because I work with code from different projects with different standards.
Text Splitting - For Log File Parsing
Ever need to parse a CSV file or extract specific columns from log data? The split tool breaks text apart by any delimiter you specify.
Real example: Had a CSV with user data, but I only needed the email addresses (column 3). Split by comma, grabbed column 3, done.
Finding and Replacing - Like Your Editor, But Better
Sometimes you need to do find/replace across multiple files or on text that's not in a file yet. The web-based find/replace tool handles this without needing to save files or open an editor.
Real example: Had a list of API endpoints that changed from v1 to v2. Instead of manually updating each one, find/replace did it in seconds.
Comparing Text - When Git Diff Isn't Enough
Sometimes you need to compare two blocks of text that aren't in version control. Maybe it's API responses, configuration files, or data exports.
The difference checker highlights exactly what changed between two pieces of text. Super useful for debugging when you know something changed but can't figure out what.
Real example: API was returning different data than expected. Compared the current response with the expected response to quickly spot the differences.
What Makes These Tools Better Than Alternatives
No installation: Everything runs in the browser. No need to install CLI tools or remember command syntax.
No file management: Work directly with text. Don't need to save files just to process them.
Fast: Built for quick, one-off tasks. Paste, process, copy, done.
Reliable: They just work. No dependencies, no version conflicts, no setup.
When I Use These vs Code Editor Tools
My code editor has some of these features, but the web tools are better for:
- Quick one-off tasks
- Processing text that's not in a file yet
- Working with data from other sources (APIs, logs, etc.)
- When I need to share the result with someone immediately
For actual code editing, I still use my editor. But for text processing tasks, these web tools are often faster.
The Time Savings Add Up
I probably save 2-3 hours per week using these tools instead of doing text processing manually or writing custom scripts. That's 100+ hours per year.
Maybe that doesn't sound like much, but those hours add up. Plus, it's less context switching - I can handle text processing tasks immediately instead of setting aside time to write scripts.
If you're dealing with similar text processing challenges, check out the developer text tools and see if any of them can save you time too.