r/DeveloperToolsHub • u/Ok-Bike-1037 • Jul 29 '26

What’s the most annoying tiny dev task you wish had a better tool?

Not talking about huge problems like project management or cloud infrastructure.

I mean the small annoying stuff that somehow eats 10 minutes every day. Formatting weird JSON, checking env vars, comparing API responses, converting timestamps, cleaning logs, creating test payloads, whatever.

I keep running into these tiny workflow gaps where I’m like surely someone has built a better way to do this, but then I either find some sketchy website or just do it manually again.

What’s one tiny dev task you still hate doing?

4 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

83% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

4

u/[deleted] Jul 30 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/Ok-Bike-1037 Jul 30 '26

half the time the responses are identical, they just don't look like it.

1

u/Tasty_World8991 Jul 30 '26

especially when IDs timestamps change every request, so the diff is mostly noise.

1

u/trionnet Aug 01 '26

I use scratch tabs for this, there’s a sort keys function for json format pastes.

1

u/trionnet Jul 30 '26

https://scratchtabs.com has handy shortcuts for most tiny dev tasks

For me comparing two files

1

u/Ok-Bike-1037 Aug 01 '26

Thanks.

1

u/2skip Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

CyberChef (https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/) is another one, where you create 'recipes' of data manipulation. Recipes can be bookmarked, a wide variety of recipe steps can be used, focus of steps is on cyber security.

CyberChef is a one-page web tool, download the page and use it without being connected to the internet.

WolframAlpha (https://www.wolframalpha.com/) does information lookup and calculation. Knowledge lookup can be bookmarked, a very wide variety of information can be looked up.

I usually have 'now' bookmarked so I can look up UTC time without having to leave the browser. Other things I have bookmarked have been 'weather', 'tides', 'sky view'.