Joshua Chini

I am creating this list of software and services mainly for myself so that I can refer back to it when I need it. This list of software and services is what I am currently using at the time this article was last updated. There are several other great lists available online including Scott Hanselman’s Ultimate Tools List which is where I found several of the applications listed below including Cmder and NimbleText. I highly recommend reading through his list as it is impressive.

Developer Tools

• Visual Studio – Free and Paid Versions, if you are doing .NET development then most likely you are using Visual Studio. It’s features and capabilities are unequaled across the whole development landscape.
• Visual Studio Code – Free, a cross platform text editor that gains super powers thru the addition of extensions such as full intellisense and debugging for C#, Python, JavaScript, and Go. It is now the defacto PowerShell IDE and is quickly becoming the editor of choice for many in the web community. It is my editor of choice for web development, F#, and PowerShell.
• LinqPad – Free and Paid Versions, this is one of the tools I use almost every day. LINQPad is not just for LINQ queries, but any C#/F#/VB expression, statement block or program. Prototype your ideas in LINQPad and then paste working code into Visual Studio.
• Curl – Free, if you need to transfer data from the command line curl is the tool to use.
• Wget – Free, curl is my default, but when I need the ability to download recursively, or even just download everything that is referred to from a remote resource, be it a HTML page or a FTP directory listing I use Wget.
• BareTail – Free and Paid Versions, a free real-time log file monitoring tool.
• Cmder – Free, the best console emulator that I have found on Windows. It supports an amazing number of features.
• Fiddler – Free, is a free web debugging proxy which logs all HTTP(s) traffic between your computer and the Internet. Use it to debug traffic from virtually any application that supports a proxy like IE, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera and more.
• Git – Free, is a free and open source distributed version control system.
• GitHub – Free and Paid Versions, it is GitHub what else is there to say. It is free and awesome.
• GitKraken – Free and Paid Versions, I have tried numerous Git clients and the one that I am currently using is GitKraken.
• Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) – Free and Paid Versions, Microsoft’s software development platform which includes source control, agile tools and work tracking, testing, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and more.
• npm – Free, is the package manager for JavaScript and the world’s largest software registry.
• Docker – Free, if you are doing container based development then you are familiar with Docker. Docker implements a high-level API to provide lightweight containers that run processes in isolation. Container support is built into Windows and Linux.
• Postman – Free and Paid Versions, if you are developing RESTful API’s then you need to try Postman. It is a powerful GUI platform to make your API development faster & easier, from building API requests through testing, documentation and sharing.
• Boomerang – SOAP & REST Client – Free, Chrome extension which generates SOAP requests with default values for testing SOAP services. Similar to Postman, but was easier for me to use with SOAP services.
• NimbleText – Free and Paid Versions, is a text manipulation and code generation tool available online or as a free download.
• SysInternal Tools – Free, invaluable set of free utilities for to administer, monitor, and debug Windows systems.
• dotPeek – Free, .NET decompiler and assembly browser.
• MockPlus – Free and Paid Versions, a powerful prototyping tool that has a simple drag-and-drop interface which allows you to build interactive prototypes. Mockplus comes with more than 3,000 icons and nearly 200 components.
• Devart dotConnect for Oracle – Free and Paid Versions, is an ORM enabled data provider for Oracle that builds on ADO.NET technology to present a complete solution for developing Oracle-based database applications.
• Devart Data Compare for Oracle – Paid, is a tool for Oracle database comparison and synchronization. It helps you quickly compare data in two or more tables, find the differences at a glance, and generate a script to effortlessly synchronize data.
• Devart Schema Compare for Oracle – Paid, is a tool for database schema comparison and synchronization.
• Devart dbForge SQL Complete – Free, is an add-in for SQL Server Management Studio and Visual Studio that speeds up SQL code writing, offers context-based smart suggestions, performs automatic formatting, refactoring and a lot of other things that save your time and effort in the database development process.
• Toad for Oracle – Paid, is a database development and management toolset.
• Stackify Prefix – Free, code profiler that shows logs, errors, queries, and performance metrics.

Developer Services

• Twilio – Paid, provides a variety of communication services including SMS, voice, and video.
• HockeyApp – Paid, provides beta distribution, crash reporting, user metrics, feedback, and powerful workflow integrations for mobile applications.
• Xamarin Test Cloud – Paid, automate your app testing on 2,000 real devices in the cloud.
• Let’s Encrypt – Free, is a free, automated, and open Certificate Authority. There is no excuse to not be using https at this point.
• Azure – Free and Paid Versions, since I am primarily a .NET developer and get credits to play with their services as part of my MSDN license Azure has been the cloud platform I have spent the most time with.
• CodePen – Free and Paid Versions, is an online community for testing and showcasing user-created HTML, CSS and JavaScript code snippets. It functions as an online code editor and open-source learning environment, where developers can create code snippets, creatively named “pens”, and test them.

Visual Studio Extensions

• Resharper – Paid, extends Visual Studio with additional code analysis, refactoring’s, navigation and search, code formatting and cleanup, and code generation.
• OzCode – Paid, powerful debugging extension that provides invaluable insights into the state of your running code especially your LINQ queries.

Visual Studio Code Extensions

• C#
• Code Runner
• Code Spell Checker
• Debugger for Chrome
• Docker
• ESLint
• HTML Snippets
• Ionide-FAKE
• Ionide-fsharp
• Ionide-Paket
• markdownlint
• mssql
• npm
• PowerShell
• Settings Sync
• vscode-icons
• XML Tools

General Software

• 7Zip – Free, is an open source file archiver with a high compression ratio and support for multiple compression formats.
• AutoHotKey – Free, is a free, open-source scripting language for Windows that allows users to easily create small to complex scripts for all kinds of tasks such as: form fillers, auto-clicking, macros, etc.
• BeyondCompare – Paid, file and folder comparison.
• NotePad++ – Free, is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages.
• VLC – Free, is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
• Foxit PDF Reader – Free, PDF reader.
• Putty – Free, is an SSH and telnet client.
• FastStone Capture – Paid, screen capture software.
• Snagit – Paid, screen capture software,
• XYplorer – Paid, file manager for Windows
• LastPass – Free and Paid Versions, cross platform password manager.
• Typora – Free, cross platform markdown editor.
• Paint.NET – is free image and photo editing software.
• DropBox – Free and Paid Versions, file synchronization service with cloud storage.
• Microsoft OneDrive – Free and Paid Versions, file synchronization service with cloud storage.
• Microsoft OneNote – Paid, a digital notebook for capturing any type of information. This is my digital brain which I add to daily and contains years of notes and research.
• Microsoft Teams – Paid, Microsoft’s answer to Slack. We use this at work and really enjoy using it.
• Calibre – Free, is a powerful and easy to use e-book manager.
• Ditto – Free, extends the Windows clipboard with history, search, custom paste functions, and more.
• Listary – Free and Paid Versions, a combination of app launcher and search utility.
• RegScanner – Free, is a small utility that allows you to scan the Registry.
• SharpKeys – Free, is a utility that manages a Registry key that allows Windows to remap one key to any other key.
• Speccy – Free, gives you detailed information on every piece of hardware in your computer.
• TeamViewer – Free, remote desktop access across platforms
• gSyncit – Free and Paid Versions, enables syncing Outlook calendars, contacts, notes, and tasks with your Google, Toodledo, Todoist, Pocket Informant Online, Evernote, Dropbox, Simplenote, Nozbe accounts.
• CrashPlan – Free and Paid Versions, backup software and cloud service.
• OpenShot Video Editor – Free, open source cross platform video editor.
• PDF Toolkit – Free, is a simple tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents.
• PocketCasts – Free and Paid Versions, the best podcast player that I have used so far.
• Google Photos – Free, unlimited photo backup with an amazing image recognition system. I can search for people, places, or object names such as white board or receipt and it magically displays just those pictures. It backs up all the images across all of our devices including phones, tablets, and Windows computers.

Services

• WordPress – Free and Paid Versions, I host this blog on WordPress.
• NameCheap – Paid, Domain Name Service which I purchased my domain.
• Plex – Free and Paid Versions, media player system that consist of a media server and a suite of cross platform client apps. I use Plex to stream movies, music, and TV to my Roku, Android devices, and Windows computers.
• Feedly – Free and Paid Versions, RSS news aggregator. I switched to Feedly after Google Reader was terminated. I use gReader on my Android devices to consume the content.
• Pocket – Free and Paid Versions, save articles, videos or pretty much anything else you find on the web into Pocket. I use it primarily to aggregate articles I want to read later on my tablet or Kindle.
• Google Voice – Free, is a telephony service that provides call forwarding and voicemail services, voice and text messaging, as well as U.S. and international calls. I have used this service since it was called Grand Central. I use it as a home phone with the Obihai OBi200 device.
• Wunderlist – Free, feature rich todo app. This one makes me sad as Microsoft bought the company and is sunsetting the service as it is replacing it with Microsoft To-Do. I have not used To-Do yet so I can’t speak from experience, but from the reviews I have read it is missing a number of features that Wunderlist currently provides.
• Mint – Free, manage your financial accounts, bills, and budgets all from one app.