Components I use: NConsoler

Need an equivalent to boost program_options in c#?
Here you go; NConsoler provides an AOP approach on command line parsing.

Code looks like this:

using System;
using NConsoler;

public class Program {
    public static void Main(params string[] args) {
        Consolery.Run(typeof(Program), args);
    }

    [Action]
    public static void Method(
        [Required] string name,
        [Optional(true)] bool flag) {
        Console.WriteLine("name: {0}, flag: {1}", name, flag);
    }
}

Rating: Great!

SoftwareArchitekTOUR on heise Developer

Heise Developer started a podcast series about software architecture. So if you are in the lucky position to understand spoken German and  Schwäbisch you might want to listen:

Episode 0: Start des SoftwareArchitekTOUR-Podcast plus Ausblick
Episode 1: Über den Einsatz von Patterns
Episode 2: Patterns in der Java-Welt
Episode 3: Patterns in der .NET-Welt
Episode 4: Definition, Einsatz und Zukunft von Middleware
Episode 5: Definition, Einsatz und Zukunft von Middleware, Teil 2

Books on my desk: Framework Design Guidelines

This book is not the kind of book you start reading and you just cannot stop. It is a reference book I regularly take at hand when I'm I'm in doubt on how to do something like what kind of exception should I catch or throw. Additionally it is a good idea to watch Krzysztof Cwalinas and Brad Adams blogs because they publish updates to new and changed rules there.

Rating: Must be available!

Books on my desk: .NET 2.0 Interoperability Recipes by Bruce Bukovics

One book I more often touch than I would like to is ".NET 2.0 Interoperability Recipes by Bruce Bukovics". Every time when I need to interface old code with new code (or vice versa) I find myself grabbing this book. The book does what the cover promises: it provides short recipes on how to tackle common Interop scenarios.

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.