Essential Programming Tools
Here is a list of programming tools I find essential in my development work. I’m omitting the obvious PHP, Apache, MySQL, Flash, Flex etc. in the hope of highlighting the smaller utilities. These are the ones off the top of my head but I hope to add to it later.
General Programming
- Aptana – PHP and Subversion integration, Dreamweaver “Ctrl+U” upload goodness.
- Beyond Compare – Compare folders, zip files, FTP sites. Integrates well with Tortoise SVN and Tortoise CVS.
- Notepad++ – Excellent file support, the right balance of being lightweight and feature rich for a text editor.
- Tortoise SVN – Windows Explorer integration, very easy to use and unobtrusive Subversion client.
- Enhanced Windows Console – A recent find but looks very useful.
Design Tools
- Color Cop – Simple, no-nonsense colour picking.
- @icon sushi – A really good little .ICO file editor
Flash Development
- FlashDevelop – Nice integration with open-source Flash compilers etc. Better than the ActionScript editor in Flash IDE anyday.
- ServiceCapture – Nice tool for debugging AMF, JSON and SOAP. Acts as a proxy for your browser and so can also be used to throttle bandwidth for testing.
- .sol Editor – A Flash Shared Object file parser and editor. Very handy indeed.
Network Tools
- WinSCP – Good SCP Client for remote file administration.
- FileZilla – Simple, lightweight and efficient FTP Client. A handy connection manager interface. Regularly updated.
- PuTTY – Command line console for remote server administration.
Database Design & Management
- fabFORCE DBDesigner – Great (but slightly buggy) tool for sketching out DB schemas visually. Will create/update/reverse-engineer databases.
- SQLite2008 Pro Enterprise Manager – Powerful tool for managing SQLite databases. I’ve found myself using this a lot lately.
.NET Programming
- SharpDevelop – Very lightweight compared to VS.NET. Perfect for the odd bit of ASP.NET 2.0 development.
- UltiDev Cassini Web Server – A No-frills (embeddable) web server for .NET written in .NET. A great development alternative to IIS.