Tools
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.
Recent Changes are highlighted in red.
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
- Registry and File Access: 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: 2% [?]
