My Essential Tool List
Comments(5) My heart skipped a few beats the other day due to that awful hard drive clicking sound that usually precedes a hard disk failure.
So, in honor of the impending machine rebuild that I will likely face soon, I thought I would create my own essential tool list to document my current thoughts on the matter.
I am not so ambitious as to try to follow in the footsteps of Scott Hanselman with his famous ultimate tool list (which I still consult on a regular basis) and create an exhaustive survey of almost every good tool out there. Instead, I opted to only list my current tool of choice for a particular category and task.
I really like experimenting with new tools and am usually content to use any number of tools for a given task. However, I also try to simplify my life as much as possible by only keeping what I think is the best tool for a particular category of tasks installed on my computer at one time.
For example, I used to be a big fan of SlickRun and WinKey to launch my programs. But as soon as I discovered Launchy and AutoHotKey and came to the conclusion that they were better, I uninstalled SlickRun and WinKey lickety split. I still think they are both good tools, but who needs all the clutter…
I definitely welcome any suggestions for improvements to my current lineup.
Development
- Day Job Programming Language & RDBMS: C# & SQL Server 2005
- Current Night Time Programming Environment: Ruby on Rails & MySQL
- Unit Testing Framework: MbUnit
- Mock Framework: Rhino.Mocks
- Unit Test Runner: TestDriven.NET
- Automated Web Testing: WatiN
- Web Framework: ASP.NET MVC
- ORM: NHibernate, Fluent NHibernate (mapping), and LINQ to NHibernate (querying)
- IoC Container: Castle’s Windsor
- Refactoring Tool: ReSharper
- Visual Studio Plugin: GhostDoc
- Powershell Editor: PowerGUI
- Light-Weight Editor: Notepad2, SCiTE
- Light-Weight Query Analyzer: Query Express
- Regex: Espresso
Code Analysis
Development Lifecycle
- Source Control: VisualSVN Server & TortoiseSVN
- Source Control Search: Fisheye
- Build: Nant, Visual Build
- Continuous Integration: Team City
- Issue Tracking: JIRA
- Document Management: Confluence
- Visual Mockups: Balsamiq
Debugging
- Dissasembly: Reflector
- Javascript: Firebug
- Web Performance: YSlow
- Locked Files: Unlocker
- HTTP Request: Firebug
- RegistryFileProcess: ProcessMonitor
- Open Ports: CPorts
- Slow Windows Start-Up Time: AutoRuns
- Assembly Binding: Fusion Log Viewer
Utility
- Application Launcher: Launchy
- Custom Hotkeys: AutoHotkey
- Compression: 7Zip
- PDF: Foxit Reader
- FTP: FileZilla
- Desktop Search: Everything
- Password Management: KeePass
- Terminal Sessions: RoyalTS
- Merge & Diff: Beyond Compare
- Screen Capture: Snag-It
- Disk Space Analysis: WinDirStat
- Monitor Management: UltraMon
- Password Recovery: SIW
- Mounting ISO Images: Virtual Clone Drive
- Bulk File Copy: RoboCopy
MISC
- Command Shell: PowerShell
- Graphics: Paint.NET
- Virtualization: Virtual PC
- Browser: Firefox
- Favorite FireFox Plugin: Gestures
- Blogging Client: LiveWriter
- Blogging Engine: WordPress
- Notes: OneNote
Essential WebSites
- RSS Reader: Google Reader
- Task Management: RememberTheMilk
- Bookmarking: Del.ic.ious
Popularity: 16% [?]
Looks like you should add ‘get askismet working with pingbacks’ to your tool list.
As for me, my tool list is simple, even when encountering the click of death:
- OS X 10.5
- Applecare
- Time Machine
- Subversion
- MAMP
- Vim & various plugins
Dude, why would you want to rebuild the machine? Isn’t that what backups are for? Windows Home Server works fine for this, plus it gives you other niceties. You can get either a complete box from HP (for example, there are others), or build the box yourself from scraps and old harddrives you know you’ve got in that closet
@Karl – Good point about pingbacks. There was a time when they were relevant links, but now they are too spamish to allow in the comment section.
@Max – Great suggestion! One of my next posts will be on tools that are at the top of my list to try in the next few months. I will definitely include Windows Home Server on that list.
[...] Vote My Essential Tool List [...]