Essential Java Development Backend Tools
As a Java backend developer, being prepared with appropriate Java development backend tools might raise productivity and improve the quality of your code. But what makes the list of the most indispensable tools you should include in your development workflow? Let’s dive in.
1. Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)
The mature IDE is the central nervous system of a developer’s arsenal. Java developers are gifted with some excellent options:
- IntelliJ IDEA: SMART code completion, highly advanced refactoring, and an excellent plugin ecosystem.
- Eclipse: It is highly extensible, very flexible, and used for the development of many other
- Programming languages rather than Java.
- NetBeans: An open-source IDE with vibrant support for developing Java applications, providing code analysis and debugging features.
2. Build Tools
These Java development backend tools can automate Java applications’ building, testing, and packaging. The most widely used build tools include:
- Maven, often called a multi-paradigm tool, is a general-purpose tool for building different applications. It manages dependencies, compiles Java code, and runs associated tests.
- Gradle is a versatile build automation tool that delivers much shorter and more efficient build processes.
3. Version Control Systems
Version Control is important for tracking changes to your code base and for the simultaneous work of many developers. What is the industry standard?
Git: Distributed version control, excellent branching and merging capabilities, and team collaboration.
4. Testing Frameworks
- Good testing is essential for high-quality and reliable code, which, therefore, requires good written tests. Below are the popular testing frameworks in Java; the most used framework for unit writing and running tests is JUnit.
- TestNG: TestNG offers flexible testing options and supports various test paradigms, including data-driven and parallel testing.
- Mockito is a general-purpose mocking framework that generates mock objects in-development code.
5. Application Servers
Typically, it is called the runtime environment used by Java Web applications. The most well-known application servers are the following: Tomcat, which is free and open-source and has extensive usage; WildFly, which is a full, powerful, flexible application server; and Jetty, which is very small and embeddable.
6. Cloud Platforms
Cloud platforms offer scalable and very reliable infrastructure for hosting Java applications. Among them, the most popular are:
- AWS is an all-around cloud platform with several services related to computing, storage, databases, and more.
- Azure: Microsoft’s cloud platform provides services comparable to those of AWS.
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP): From Google and, increasingly, augmenting the AI/ML capabilities.
7. Containerization Tools
It leverages Docker and Kubernetes. It assists in packaging and deploying applications into portable containers.
- Docker: It is a platform that develops, ships, and runs containers
- Kubernetes: Container orchestration platform that runs along with scales containerized applications.
These Java development backend tools will help developers have easier development, good quality code, and, therefore, quality applications.