Kind of in the vein of Scott Hanselman’s tool list I thought I’d put together a nice tool list. Partly to help me keep all my links together, as it makes going to get the latest versions much easier. It also allows me to quickly get my list up and running on a new build. While I do tend to stick to Open Source as much as possible (yes I’m a penny pincher) I will break down and buy software from time to time. It usually depends on the Wife Acceptance Factor. Which is usually a big Zero. Part of my reasoning around free software is that I’ve also worked for penny pinching companies that have little to no budget for software tools. They get you the compiler and that’s about it. So you end up either building or finding what you need out in the vast wide internet.

I do plan on expanding this list as other things come up or I find another cool tool to use.

Primary First round developer tools - The ones that get loaded no matter what

• Microsoft Visual Studio (whichever flavor I’m running or multiple as the case may be) and now they have express editions which are free.
• Nant, currently using version 0.85
• NantContrib, lots of extensions to nant that are handy to have.
• Nunit, I always grab the latest version on this one.
• xUnit, same here get the latest and greatest.
• xUnitNantTask, this was built by Torkel Ödegaard and now that I use TeamCity at home and xUnit it has become an essential tool.
• TeamCity, really, you need to be doing CI even if it’s just you and nobody else. Get into the habit and the great thing is it’s free.
• Reflector, if you have never used this go get it now. It’s an invaluable tool for looking at what is under the covers. Ever wonder how Microsoft implemented something. What about a 3rd party vendor. Open this tool and take a look. It’s awesome, free and should be on every .Net developers workstation.
• Winmerge, whatever the current version is. Invaluable if you are using SubVersion or CVS.
• Tortise CVS or SVN sometimes both depending on the need, if you don’t use source control you really should check these out. Makes it pretty easy.
• Textpad, I use this to do all kinds of stuff but primarily I use it for doing HTML, PHP, CSS, etc. Great tool and not too expensive either.
• nHibernate, got to love getting DB stuff up and running quickly.
• log4net, logging is a great thing to have and who want’s to keep reinventing the wheel. It works.
• Gallio, this is a new one. It’s a unit test GUI. It’s awesome. Go check it out, and it works with all kinds of stuff.

While I don’t have Resharper or Code Rush, after all they cost money :), I do plan on getting Code Rush with Refactor Pro at some point.

Of course there are also a lot of other tools out there that can be helpful, useful, essential, or what have you. It just depends on your needs. Below is a list of other cool things that I have used or use regularly.

• Windows Live Writer, Blog posting tool, works ok. I’m still getting the hang of this tool, it still messes up my posts and I have to clean them up. Just need to play with it some more but it has lot’s of extensions which is nice.
• Google Desktop Sidebar, yes I use this. My workplace is on Windows XP so no sidebar built in. Very nice to have.
• Sysinternals tools, there are so many tools up here. I’d say pull what you need or use there file share (which is awesome) to just copy them all down locally in one fell swoop.
• TestDriven.Net, I’ve used this from time to time. However lately I’ve been using Gallio.
• WinAmp, I really don’t care for iTunes and I have a non Apple MP3 player anyway.