14 application to install on a new development machine

I’ve just received a new T510 two days ago, and started installing my favorite applications on it immediately. I’ve noticed that there are some applications that I could afford not to install on the new machine while there were others I could not do without.

The list below was compiled for the benefit of two parties – you the reader and myself, because I want to keep track of the applications I use for the next time I need to install a new dev/home machine.

General Productivity

  1. Dropbox – One sync to rule them all! I use Dropbox to synchronize files between my computers (duh). My EBooks, reference projects, presentations and of course my Keepass data file (see below).
  2. Evernote – for all my note taking needs. I use it to save PDFs and code snippets as well as interesting blog posts and lists
  3. Everything Search Engine – this free, fast and (very) small utility help me find the files on my machine. After a quick indexing session it was able to find any file I’ve looked for. Unlike many desktop search utilities it does not bother me with annoying dialogs nor does it cause performance decrease.
  4. Keepass password safe  - It seems nowadays that every site I use require me to create a user name, I have quite a few passwords and I want to have them on my machine just in case I need to log to a site I’ve used last year. I keep all of my passwords and serial numbers in Keepass and I use Dropbox to sync the data file between all of my machines. Now I only need to remember a single password.
  5. Mozilla Firefox – Currently my browser of choice - because IE is just not good enough.
  6. Live Writer – for writing blog posts, just like this one.

Development Environment

  1. Visual Studio – I’m a C++/.NET developer and this is my main tool of work. Right now I use VS2008 for most of my development needs and I’m constantly moving my projects to VS2010. I’ve installed F#, WIX and AXUM templates for my pet/hobby projects and research.
  2. Expresso Regular Expression Tool – if you ever needed to write (or read) RegEx you know you might need some help. There are other good tools for RegEx authoring such as Regulator and Regulazy but I prefer Expresso simple because it works the way I need it to.
  3. JetBrains Resharper – The ultimate visual studio add-in. It enhances my productivity and improve my visual studio experience.
  4. NDepend – This tool floods you with information about your project and it’s health. Using it you will probably learn a few things about your project that you weren’t aware of.
  5. NUnit – The unit testing framework I use for the projects that I do not use MSTest.
  6. Sysinternals Suite – No development machine should go without it. It’s not a development tool per se but I find I use Process Explorer, File Monitor and PSTools quite a lot during software development.
  7. Tortoise SVN – Most of my pet projects are stored on repositories that has SubVersion support. If I want to view source of a project on Assembla, CodePlex or a similar site I know I can do it using Tortoise SVN.
  8. Typemock Isolator – do I really need to explain? The best Isolation framework I know from the inside out.

That’s my list, it’s not complete by any means and I plan to keep updating it from time to time.

Now it’s your turn - What applications do you install on a new machine?

 

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