You already know we add new tools constantly on StackShare—from time to time we also like to give you a roundup of the most popular new tools on the platform. We ask the developers of the past week's most popular tools three questions about the inspiration behind their tool, how it compares to other similar tools, and we ask them about a tool they love (aside from their own).
The goal here is to help you understand why these new tools were created. how they stack up against existing tools, and help you discover some hidden gems.
An open-source feature flagging and A/B testing tool
Flagr is an open source Go service from the team at <a href_"https://checkr.com/"> Chekr that delivers the right experience to the right entity and monitors the impact. It provides feature flags, experimentation (A/B testing), and dynamic configuration. It has clear swagger REST APIs for flags management and flag evaluation.
Here’s Zhuojie Zhou, Checkr team member and creator of Flagr, with more on Flagr and another tool he recommends...
Why did you create Flagr?
We are moving fast, and we need a low-risk and performant service to guide the rollout processes and our decisions.
How does Flagr compare to similar tools?
Flagr supports feature flagging, A/B testing, and dynamic configuration. All of them are first class citizens. Flagr decouples the metrics computation from flag evaluation, and you own 100% of your data.
What’s one tool that you use and love?
Codeflow is an open-source extendable deployment pipeline. Checkr is using it to deploy all the services.
Got an app or service and you want to enable your users to use notifications with their provider of choice? Working on a script and you want to receive notification based on its output? You don't need to implement a solution yourself, or use individual provider libs. A one stop shop for all notification providers with a unified and simple interface.
While I was working on a different project, I needed to enable its users to send notifications. Soon I discovered that this was a project by itself, discovering and implementing different provider API, testing it, relying on outdated documentation at times and etc. It was quite the endeavour. Some providers offered their own SDK packages, but that meant adding more dependencies to an already dependency rich project, which was not ideal. There has to be a better way, right?
How does Notifiers compare to similar tools?
It's a common interface to many, many notification providers, with a minimal set of dependencies (just requests, jsonschema and clickfor CLI operations).
What’s one tool that you use and love?
I really like tqdm. It's a progress bar displayer and a life changer when working with cli scripts. Its ease of use along with its usefulness is mind bogglingly good :-)
A utility-first CSS framework for rapid UI development
Tailwind is different from frameworks like Bootstrap, Foundation, or Bulma in that it's not a UI kit. It doesn't have a default theme, and there are no built-in UI components. On the flip side, it also has no opinion about how your site should look and doesn't impose design decisions that you have to fight to undo.
Here’s Adam Wathanr, co-creator of Tailwind CSS, with more on the project and another tool he recommends...
Why did you create Tailwind CSS?
I desperately wanted a CSS framework that would help me move faster on new projects, but didn’t come with a bunch of design opinions that I had to fight to override. Before Tailwind, I felt like my options were fight with Bootstrap, or start from scratch. Tailwind gives me a starting point without ever crossing the line that makes it more harmful than helpful.
How does Tailwind CSS compare to similar tools?
Compared to other CSS frameworks like Bootstrap, Bulma, or Foundation, Tailwind is a lot less opinionated and makes it easier to implement custom designs without feeling like you’re layering hacks on top of existing CSS. Compared to other low-level utility frameworks like Tachyons, Tailwind is much easier to customize and encourages a more opinionated workflow that makes it easier to learn.
What’s one tool that you use and love?
I love hub, GitHub’s CLI tool. I use it every day to create new repositories, submit pull requests, etc.
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