Tools Thoughtworks Technology Radar pushes that up a bit further, but more and more often our teams find themselves longing for the abstractions afforded by modern programming languages. Cloud Development Kit for Terraform (CDKTF), which resulted from a collaboration between AWS’s CDK team and Hashicorp, makes it possible for teams to use several programming languages, including TypeScript and Java, to define and provision infrastructure. With this approach it follows the lead of Pulumi while remaining in the Terraform ecosystem. We’ve had good experiences with CDKTF but have decided to keep it in the Assess ring until it moves out of beta. 61. Chrome Recorder panel Assess Chrome Recorder panel is a preview feature in Google Chrome 97 that allows for simple record and playback of user journeys. While this definitely isn’t a new idea, the way in which it is integrated into Chrome allows for quick creation, editing and running of scripts. The panel also integrates nicely with the performance panel, which makes getting repeated consistent feedback on page performance easier. While record/playback style testing always needs to be used with care in order to avoid brittle tests, we think this preview feature is worth assessing, especially if you’re already using the Chrome Performance panel to measure your pages. 62. Excalidraw Assess Excalidraw is a simple but powerful online drawing tool that our teams enjoy using. Sometimes teams just need a quick picture instead of a formal diagram, for remote teams Excalidraw provides a quick way to create and share diagrams. Our teams also like the “lo-fi” look of the diagrams it can produce, which is reminiscent of the whiteboard diagrams they would have produced when co-located. One caveat: you need to pay attention to the default security — at the time of writing, anyone who has the link can see the diagram. A paid-for version provides further authentication. 63. GitHub Codespaces Assess GitHub Codespaces allows developers to create development environments in the cloud and access them through an IDE as though the environment were local. GitHub isn’t the first company to implement this idea; we previously blipped about Gitpod. We like that Codespaces allows environments to be standardized by using dotfiles configuration, making it quicker to onboard new team members, and that they offer VMs with up to 32 cores and 64GB memory. These VMs can be spun up in under ten seconds, potentially offering environments more powerful than a developer laptop. 64. GoReleaser Assess GoReleaser is a tool that automates the process of building and releasing a Go project for different architectures via multiple repositories and channels, a common need for Go projects targeting different platforms. You run the tool either from your local machine or via CI, with the tool available via several CI services thus minimizing set-up and maintenance. GoReleaser takes care of build, packaging, publishing and announcement of each release and supports different combinations of package format, package repository and source control. Although it’s been around for a few years, we’re surprised that more teams are not using it. If you’re regularly releasing a Go codebase, this tool is worth assessing. © Thoughtworks, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 30