Recently i changed my job, which meant i had a brand new laptop. Now after you have got to used to a set environment for number of years suddenly this change means you feel slightly handicapped. And as i use my blog as my memory dump i am going to list all the Utilities which help me in my day to day development work. I develop for the .Net platform using Microsoft Platform.
- 7Zip – Free Zip/Rar software. Although Zipping is now inbuilt in Windows i prefer using 7zip
- Winmerge – Text comparison software there are many available out there but this is the one which i have got used to and it can do the directory comparison for me as well which is great.
- TFS Power tools , Now the link here is for TFS2010 but this is a reminder for myself so that i can install it for the current version, This tool provides lots of enhancements especially of you are using TFS for your Product Life cycle management. But the most useful thing i have found most of the times is the CheckIn Checkout facility from Windows Explorer.
- Freemind– A mind mapping software, its very handy when i have to learn new business concepts. Also the tool is very handy as it uses very intuitive keys for designing the software. Thanks to the Business Analyst who exposed me to this. I have never stopped using it since. I record all my ideas using mindmap which is amazing instead of writing lots of text.
- Devart dbforge SQLComplete This is very useful if you have to constantly write SQL queries, at this point you will go but MSSQL server does this anyway. Wait till you use this one. Its free so its functionality is limited but its good enough for me. Also i can format the SQL code. The formatting requires a bit of tyding up but hey it’s a good start.
- Notepad++ Better than notepad which comes with the windows, whats better is i can open the .cs, .xml and various other files and still have the styling which are present in the original software.
- PowerGUI if you write powershell scripts daily or sparingly this one is a must as it allows me to have an IDE for writing scripts as opposed to the CUI.
- MSBuild Extension packs again the Extension packs give you so many scripts which you can use to speed up writing your build scripts.
- Fiddler The HTTP debugging proxy makes your life so much easy to see whats going out and coming through while you are developing a website or webservice.
- Google Chrome my favourite browser which enables me to take my fav links whereever i go. ofcourse i use InstaPaper as well but thats just temporary links
- Pain.Net This is a free close to PhotoShop application which is better than the plain vanilla MS Paint application
- LinqPad Whether you write LINQ, SQL or EF queries Linqpad is a good scratch pad for all of them.
- SoapUI When testing WebSercvices or WCFServices written by someone else this is most useful. Not to mention the automation and other additional stuff which you can do with their sister products
- Windows Live writer Since i like to write blogposts like this one Live writer comes in very handy. When i am having some off time could knock up a few post and there always the lunch time.
- jsfiddle The JS script scratch pad, useful for showing the colleagues and may be even asking and answering questions on StackOverflow
- SpaceSniffer In this day and age when Disk space is not premium people do not worry about it too much but it comes in handy when i am supporting or investigating a problem on an old server.
Hope anybody who stumbles on to the post also finds some of the utilites useful.If you know of any thing which you think could be useful to me please share the same on here. I will be most grateful to you.