What is your best must have list of development tools?

Question

I recently burned my development laptop (it literally threw smoke out of the vents). Pulling the hd, I could not get it to rotate with the USB device attached to the home tower. Since I was in the deadline, I had to rush and buy a new laptop (Turion 64 x2) running Vista.

After I installed my prerequisite applications VS2005 / 2008, Sql Server edition client tools, Adobe CS3 and version control clients: I wonder what list of tools "should have" these days? I'm a big fan of Fiddler and LinqPad, but I wonder what I'm missing?

[edit] I read another question here, and I know Hanselman’s list. I was not specific enough in my original question. By "these days" I meant new and latest tools (maybe only 64 bits), which in the years of geeks can be only 12 days, I don’t know. :) [/ Edit]

Answer 1

Let me be general [then specific]:

• Your IDE of choice [ VS 2008 is here]
• Your debugger [This is usually part of your development environment, but sometimes WinDbg is required)
• Its plugins for refactoring and source code management [ Resharper 4+ and Ankh SVN 2+ ]
• Adding your OS to source control [ Tortoise SVN ]
• The best Diff and Merge Tool for connecting to the above SCM tools [ WinMerge ]
• Quickly load a text editor when your ID environment is too much [ vim , Notepad ++ ]
• If you are doing web development, get the tools for this [ Firefox 3 with add-ons: Web developer , Firebug , TamperData , Poster , Firecookie , FireFTP , FirePHP , Rainbow for Firebug, ReloadEvery , Selenium IDE ]
• Essential text tools [ GNU TextUtils via cygwin or gnuwin32.sf.net ]
• Scripting Tools [ Perl , Python , zsh , all these basic GNU packages in Cygwin]
• Regular Expression Testing Tool When Your Eyes Ache [ Expresso , RegexBuddy ]

For Java, I replace 1 and 3 with Eclipse and its plugins for Maven and SVN , I did not find a refactoring plugin ... you would think that I'd use IntelliJ IDEA , but I never started using it.

Answer 2

Notepad ++ for sure

Answer 3

• Winamp (I love coding with music playing in the background)
• Coffee

Answer 4

In a specific order (I'm a .NET web developer if you can't tell from the list):

• Resharper - Keeps my code thin and clean!
• Reflector - From time to time you need to find out how the hell something works in the .NET library.
• Firebug - every web developer has installed this because it greatly facilitates debugging markup and css.
• Tortoise SVN - The best version control system I have ever used. Absolutely no complaints about this.
• NUnit - Testing a device that does not bother you. In addition, it goes well with Resharper!
• Notebook. For some reason, I cannot shake the nostalgic feeling that I use. Also my application for several things (to-do lists, quick notes, quick and dirty clipboard, etc.).

Answer 5

Scott Hanselman has an excellent, updated every year or two tool lists: Scotch Hanselman Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

Answer 6

Beyond Compare : a diff tool is always a must.

Answer 7

I like the Whole Tomato Visual Assist X plugin for Visual Studio. I think you get the “most” of it when programming in C ++ (and especially in older versions of visual studio), but there are additional syntax highlighting and refactoring tools, as well as a decent search based on context / area.

Answer 8

• Vim
• Python
• Git
• A huge collection of music;)

Answer 9

ide: visual studio / netbeans (zip file !, almost portable)

editor: notepad ++ (portable) with monaco font

file comparison: winmerge (portable)

source control: subversion, turtle

ticket management: redmine

file manager: free commander (portable)

explorer: IE, FF (portable), chrome (portable), iron (chrome without google-crap, also portable), qtweb, arora,

FF Plugins: firebug, web developer, xmarks

imclient: pidgin

email client: gmail

download manager: free download manager (portable)

sites: STACKOVERFLOW !!!, gotapi ... and google, all the time ...

miscelaneous: launchy (can't live without it!)

virtualization: virtual box (I have a machine image for each environment)

office: openoffice (portable)

lamp stack: xammp (portable!)

disc usage: windirstat (portable), scanner (portable)

pdf viewer: foxit (portable), sumatrapdf (portable)

uncompressor: 7-zip portable

Comparison tool M $ sql: sql delta p>

M $ sql management: sql visual studio manager

MySQL

Mysql management: phpmyadmin, manager with mysql

Removal Tool: revo unistaller (portable)

registry cleaner: ccleaner (portable)

ftp: filezilla (portable)

as you may have noticed, I have a particular passion for portable applications ...

Answer 10

Subversion + TortoiseSVN

Answer 11

To work with Windows:

Beyond Compare is a great tool that works well with files and folders.

Launchy - allows you to run programs without moving your hands from the keyboard.

Answer 12

Nightly assembly Resharper

Answer 13

Firebug

Answer 14

Good editor and your compiler.

Of course, some tools simplify your work. Developing .Net applications without using Visual Studio would be more confusing, but I would argue that at the end of the task, using only a text editor and csc compiler, you would have a guru, as an understanding of the language, in the shortest possible time, you will find out that others people can never enter.

Of course, a good debugger helps (also built into VS). I use Komodo to develop Perl exclusively for the debugging tools involved. Although I still prefer to edit the code using e-TextEditor.

Answer 15

Vim, Cygwin, TortoiseSVN, Eclipse. SoapUI is a great tool if you work with SOAP web services. I also found TCPTrace a very convenient tool.

Answer 16

• Firebug - for debugging CSS, changing classes, styles on the fly without reloading the page. To interactively debug Javascript by setting breakpoints. Debugging AJAX calls.
• YSlow or Google Page Speed is a firebug plugin, it shows you why your web page takes time to load. Breaks time into parallel streams, loading images, loading CSS, etc. A list of suggestions on how to increase page loading speed is also provided.
• Firefox Xpath Plugin - Allows you to right-click on any web page and find XPath elements.
• Charles Web Debugger is a simple [Windows] application that lists all the HTTP traffic coming from Firefox or IE browsers. Very useful for debugging web applications (especially with AJAX calls).

Answer 17

There are also task management and project management tools like trac basecamp, etc.

Answer 18

Cygwin

Notepad ++

true x-mouse behavior under Win 7 (manual registry failure)

process handler from sysinternals

Answer 19

I can't live without Eclipse and Mylyn

Answer 20

Komodo Edit, Cygwin (ssh, cat, less, sed, grep, etc.), Python, TortoiseSVN, TortoiseCVS

Answer 21

Rocks TextPad! And CSSViewer (FF plugin) is good. Heard Firebug is even better, as it also allows editing, but has not tried it.

In addition, virtual machines. Right now I am using MS Virtual PC (w / VM add-ons) for several projects, and this works well for my purposes. I am sure that there are better vm solutions, I just should not have looked into them.

CrossLoop and Skype for collaboration / programming pairs (especially for remote employees).

AgentRansak to search for text / file / file. I have not used it to the full, as I am new to this, so I do not know how durable it is. This works well for what I use for this. I am much more familiar with the TextPad search / replace functionality (which is amazing!).

Answer 22

• Another vote for notepad ++
• Firebug or dev toolbar in IE
• Lifehackers Texter (for expanding text)
• I could not live my life on a computer without the humanization of Enso product

Answer 23

Notepadd ++, Mercurial, FireFox, FireBug

Answer 24

Notepad2, e.TextEditor, Textmate

Winplit revolution

Google Pandora

Synergism

Firebug

IOS

Visual Studio if.net app

Answer 25

A lot depends on what kind of work I do. I use git or svn pretty much everything I write these days. Github has raised the bar for the convenience of collaboration and generally what I expect from the SCM repository. TextMate is always useful for fragments, searching and replacing regular expressions and all kinds of small subtleties of editing; for most projects, this is my main text editor. For Java, I will spend a lot of time on Eclipse , and back when I was working in .NET I would use Visual Studio . If I scratch a prototype design for a website, I will use Coda or something similar.

If you think libraries and frameworks are “development tools,” Ruby regexes , grab the cake for ease of use. Haskell Parsec wins for serious parsing, closely following Java ANTLR . Hype to be damned, I won't write a web application as productively as I did with Ruby on Rails , although Pylons in Python is nice. Likewise, with Visual Studio for working with the client-side GUI, although I think Cocoa + Xcode in Leopard can be very competitive if I ever get a good understanding of Objective-C. LLVM IR is a new build if you are writing a compiler.

Answer 26

For Python files, a good text editor (TextMate for OS X, [g] vim for Linux, Notepad for programmers on Windows), VCS (I mainly use git) .. What about this ..

A little stretch to call it a dev tool, but a google search for “python [module name]” is incredibly useful (I use it, although I can place the cursor over the import abc module and take it to the pydoc page, I always found the first google- the result is much better than the PyDoc page that TextMate calls.

I use PyLint to verify that I haven’t done anything stupid, but I’m unlikely to think that it “should have” (I mainly use it to maintain a consistent white space, after the commands and operators x = 123 , etc. )). I am also considering learning pdb (the python debugger), but I have always found that the odd print statement or registration module (in large scripts) is more than adequate.

.. what about this .. Text editor, VCS, module documentation.

Answer 27

With Eclipse, you can easily do very good analysis. See http://triviaatwork.blogspot.com/2008/09/comparing-two-folders-on.html

Answer 28

To manage programming tasks, I used ToDoList from time to time, although there are times when I prefer a Joel Excel worksheet to manage tasks (I like the elegance of a simple flat list).

Answer 29

For Skype: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/SEHE

Answer 30

I use these tools:

ClipX for clipboard.

UltraMon for multiple monitors.

RegexBuilder for creating regular expressions in .NET.

Shuffle the taskbar to shuffle windows.