Mindset for leveraging tools:
- “Know what you leverage.” -Craig Randall
- “Understand what a tool does for you before you rely on the tool.” -Brent Rector
- “Trust, but verify.” -Ronald Regan, quoting an old Russian proverb (Doveryai, no proveryai.)
- “If all that you have is a hammer, everything looks like a browser.” -Ray Ozzie
Tools of interest
Frequently used (“power”) tools:
- VMware Workstation (virtual machine)
- Araxis Merge Professional (indispensable if you need to compare two bodies of code quickly)
- TechSmith SnagIt (flexible screen capture tool)
- Altova Xmlspy (developer-oriented XML IDE)
- JetBrains Intellij IDEA (innovative Java IDE; e.g. refactoring support)
Microsoft-focused tools (e.g. Windows, .NET):
- Microsoft Visual Studio (de facto IDE)
- Reflector for .NET (class browser, decompiler and XML documentation browser) – Reflector add-ins
- Microsoft FxCop (code analysis tool)
- Sandcastle (generate reference-level documentation from code in, e.g., HTML Help format
- NAnt (command line build tool)
- NUnit (unit testing framework)
- log4net (part of the Apache Logging Services project)
- SharpZipLib (Zip, GZip, BZip2 & Tar)
- Compuware DevPartner Studio Professional
- Sysinternals (free analysis/diagnostics tools for Windows) – download entire suite
- Microsoft Debugging Tools (WinDbg)
Links of interest
Collections of note:
