Tools I need to do my job: Sandcastle

As a Clean Code Developer I'm using StyleCop to make my code look like other professional developers code (which I hope is a good thing). StyleCop pushes you to comment your code (at least the option to check for public API documentation makes a lot of sense - for the privates you might argue). For getting the full benefit of source code documentation I'm using Sandcastle to build my reference files. Sandcastle Help File Builder is a neat UI tool that eases the use of Sandcastle.

Rating: Very useful!

Tools I need to do my job: Clonezilla

For testing software a good approach is to use virtualization with tools like VMWare. Sometimes you find yourself in the situation to test on real hardware especially when you rely on concrete non virtual hardware. In those cases Clonezilla helps to get a clean system snapshot which can be restored at any time.

ReSharper Short Cuts

In my "Tools I need to do my job..." series I already mentioned ReSharper here.
To gain the full productivity power of this tool it's good to know the keyboard shortcuts. I have a printout of this pdf always on my desk:

Tools I need to do my job: ... Commander

I've always been a big fan of two file window managers since the my early computer days. Starting with Midnight Commander on unix systems I switched to (windows) Total Commander and and used this one for many years. Even on my Ubuntu I'm using at home I'm using more ore less only this type of file manager (Krusader). Now writing this post I thought of looking for an alternative to this and found two things:

1.) A site that lists alternatives to something: alternativeto.net

2.) A free alternative to Total Commander: FreeCommander (found via alternative.net here...)

At first look I was missing nothing. Maybe I will update this post once I found something that would make me change back to Total Commander.

Tools I need to do my job: Link Shell Extension

Heard of Hardlinks , Junctions , Volume Mountpoints? Powerful as they are, here's a helper to create and mange those: Link Shell Extension

Rating: Very useful!

Tools I need to do my job: PureText

PureText from Steve Miller is a little helper I use almost every day. It does simply one thing: If you have formatted text in the clipboard it will remove the formatting to pure text.

Rating: Hard to live without!

Tools I need to do my job: Console2

Console2 is a little nice helper that can host multiple command shells as tabs getting rid of many shell windows in the task bar.

Rating: Useful!

Tools I need to do my job: Debugging Tools for Windows

It is no secret that I'm a big fan of WinDbg. I try to use the Visual Studio Debugger if possible but when it comes to hard core debugging, there is no way around this tool.

Rating: Cannot do without!

Tools I need to do my job: XML Spy

When you are a power user of xml family techniques I really recommend using XML Spy from Altova. I've been trying lots of xml editing tools but none of them convinced me that much.

Rating: (Very) hard to do without!

Tools I need to do my job: UltraEdit

Does your Visual Studio starts quickly by clicking onto a source code file? Mine does not! So there is the need for an independent light footprint text editor that does a bit more that notepad. I tried some editors but none of them convinced me from moving away from from UltraEdit.

Rating: Hard to do without!

Tools I need to do my job: ManicTime

A new tool I just recently added to my toolbox is ManicTime. I was searching for something like a stop watch application where I could measure the time I'm spending for a specific task in order to get a better planning basis for SCRUM sprint planning. What I found with this tool is a time tagging application. It automatically detects idle times and lists on a time line which applications you are using. So you can easily rebuild time for tasks retrospectively because most of the time you will forget to switch stop watches in the common time keeping approach.

Rating: Really helpful for time keeping

Tools I need to do my job: VMWare

No need to stress the importance of Virtualization. There are several solutions outsite. I feel VMWare is most professional and I use the workstation in software development for system integration testing and various other tasks. (At home I'm running XP on VirtualBox in a Ubuntu Linux host and it does the job also pretty well.)

Tools I need to do my job: Visual Studio and Friends

Actually I don't know many other IDEs besides Visual Studio (have worked with Borland, VB6, Eclipse and MonoDevelop - a bit ). Visual Studio (2008) gives me together with some Add-ons a tooling that enables me providing solutions for my customers. Here's the list of Extensions I'm currently using:

ReSharper - Very, very hard to do without!
StyleCop for ReSharper - Cannot do without if you are a Clean Code Developer!
PowerToys for the Class Designer - Very nice!
GhostDoc - Hard to do without!

Tool I need to do my job: Live Writer

This is the first post in a series where I will discuss tools I regularly use to do my job. The first one to mention is:

Live Writer which I'm just now using to write this post. Nothing really needed for software development but to maintain my brain extension (this blog).

Rating: Can hardly do without.