Apps I Use Daily for Software Development

I recently got an upgrade to a much faster machine at work. Doing so made me consider all the apps that I use daily for development. So here they are:

Applications

• RSSBandit: for the first two hours at work when I’m supposed to be working. Seriously, the best aggregator for the best price.
• CLR Profiler: for profiling allocations in applications that run on the CLR. Clunky graphs, but the info is still pretty useful.
• Ethereal: network analysis tool that knows every network protocol known to man; very useful and very free.
• TcpView: check out what ports are in use at a glance.
• Process Explorer: Task Manager amped to 11. Shows everything in Task Manager plus performance monitors for each process, including .NET monitors. Also colour-coded so you can see programs using the CLR at a glance. And, of course, free.
• NUnit: to see that green, baby! I still use the NUnit GUI. Made over, of course.
• NCover: code coverage; it’s the only one to use. Here’s an improved xsl file for it.
• VS 2003: duh!
• Vault: the only source control solution. Actually, no it’s not: it’s geared toward programming teams(with money), but I use it because it’s free for personal use and Eric Sink is just so damn smart about software(like Joel Spolsky without the attitude)
• FxCop: are you designing your libraries with the MS .NET design guidelines? You should be, and this will help you.
• Regulator: excellent regular expression tool. Let’s you doodle.
• Reflector: find out how MS did their thing with the Framework.
• Codesmith: generate strongly-typed collections, data objects, or anything else with this template-based coding generator
• Notepad2 and Notepad++: two light weight text editors that do a lot more than Notepad.

VS Plugins

• TestDriven.NET: do TDD right in Visual Studio; and attach a debugger to the unit test case that is giving you some trouble. Free, but you must fill out a survey.
• Resharper: the only good refactoring tool for .NET. It’s not perfect but it’s the best out there. The only developer tool that I’ve been willing to shell out money for; I’m continually finding new things that Resharper does. (The rest on this list are all free; well, VS isn’t but I got it for free.)
• Copy As HTML: converts code to html for posting to blogs. Performs syntax highlighting and line numbers.
• GhostDoc: winner of Roy O’s add-in contest; takes the tedium out of adding comments to code. Still a little rough around the edges, but lots of potential here.

Got any others that are indispensible?