Tag Archives: new machine

Essential Tools

Insipired by Scott Hanselman’s blog post on the subject, I’ve decided to compile a lit of the tools I’ve added to my new developer machine.  Most of these are producivity enhancements, but some are just for fun.

These are just the Windows apps.  I use a MacBook at home, but haven’t got around to compiling a list of utilities I use there.  Maybe some day…

Productivity tools

  • Paint.Net - .Net based image manipulation package.
  • 7-Zip – Archive management utility
  • NotePad 2 – Fully featured text editor, with (some) syntax highlighting.
  • Windows Grep – I do a lot of work with text files, and missed the Unix Grep command.  Here’s an alternative for Windows.
  • Tail for Windows - Another unix utility port for Windows.
  • CodeRush & Refactor! - Arguably, this should have been top of my list, but since they are paid-for software I’ll leave them languishing down here.  They get used every time I’m in Visual Studio, though.
  • Snippet Compiler - Great for very small proof-of-concept testing.
  • Lutz Roeder’s .Net Reflector – Not going to link to this since it is now full of advertising and other nastiness. The original is out there – check through Google.

Fun Stuff

I’m sure there are many more that I’ve missed, but I’ll add them when I remember about them. :)