My Favourite Dev Tool of 2023 (And Why)

It’s not the flashiest—it’s the one that saved me time.

My favourite tool this year is not the one with the largest launch campaign or the most dramatic demo. It is the one that quietly removed repeated effort and let me spend more time solving the problem I had actually opened the laptop for.

The useful question behind “My Favourite Dev Tool of 2023 (And Why)” is what changes in the work afterwards. A sound idea should improve a real decision, not only give us a neat phrase for describing it.

There is a practical tension underneath this topic: we want enough structure to move confidently, but not so much that the structure becomes the work.

New technology is easiest to discuss at the extremes: either it changes everything or it is pointless. Most useful tools live in the less dramatic middle, where they solve some problems well and introduce a few new ones.

There will always be exceptions. The trick is to make them deliberate exceptions rather than habits nobody remembers choosing.