Ultimate .NET development tools - From the software development trenches

Ultimate .NET development tools

Published 15 December 06 07:56 AM | cjlotz

image I've been wanting to make a list for my own reference of all the best-of-breed tools that I prefer to use when doing .NET development.  I specifically decided to not include any third party control/report libraries.  I focus instead on the tools that assist me in crafting high-quality code quickly and effectively.

Categories

  • IDE = Develop/generate/refactor code within the VS IDE or separate IDE
  • SCM = Software Configuration Management (Source Control etc.)
  • TDD = Test Driven Development
  • DBMS = Database Management Systems
  • CI = Continuous Integration
  • FR = Frameworks (Persistence, AOP, Inversion of Control, Logging etc.)
  • UT = Utility Tools
  • CA = Code Analysis (Static + Dynamic)
  • TC = Team Collaboration (Bug tracking, Project management etc.)
  • MD = Modelling
  • QA = Testing Tools
  • DP = Deployment (Installations etc.)

Tools

* = free/open source

  1. [IDE] Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition for Software Developers
  2. [IDE] ReSharper for refactoring and to "develop with pleasure"
  3. [IDE] CodeSmith for generating code.  Also consider T4 with Clarius’s Visual T4 Editor.  
  4. [IDE]* GhostDoc for inserting xml code comments
  5. [IDE] Altova Xml Suite for any xml related work.  XmlPad is the best, free alternative I know of.
  6. [DBMS] SqlServer 2008 for DBMS
  7. [DBMS] Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition for Database Professionals for managing databases as code artifacts
  8. [SCM]* Subversion for source control
  9. [SCM]* TortoiseSVN as windows shell extension for Subversion
  10. [SCM] VisualSVN for integration of TortoiseSVN into VS.  Ankh is the best, free alternative I know of.
  11. [SCM]* KDiff3 for merging
  12. [TDD]* NUnit as preferred xUnit testing framework
  13. [TDD] TestDriven.NET as test runner for "zero-friction unit testing"! 
  14. [TDD]* moq as mock framework.
  15. [TDD] NCover for code coverage stats
  16. [CI]* TeamCity as build server
  17. [CI]* MSBuild Extension Pack for additional MSBuild tasks.  Also see the MSBuild.Community.Tasks. 
  18. [FR]* log4net as logging framework
  19. [FR]* PostSharp as Aspect Oriented Programming framework
  20. [FR]* Ninject as IoC container
  21. [FR]* NHibernate as Object Relational Mapper.  MindScape LightSpeed also seems to be maturing very nicely.
  22. [UT]* Reflector to drill down to the guts of any code library (also check-out the nice plug-ins)
  23. [UT]* Silverlight Spy to dissect any Silverlight application.
  24. [UT] RegexBuddy for managing those difficult regular expressions.  Regulator is the best, free alternative I know of. 
  25. [UT]* SnippetCompiler to quickly test snippets of .NET code.
  26. [UT]* LINQPad as a easy way to query SQL databases using LINQ.
  27. [UT]* Fiddler to debug all your HTTP traffic in IE.   Also see the neXpert plugin for monitoring performance problems.
  28. [UT]* Web Development Helper to assist with testing ASP.NET applications running in IE.  Also see the IE Developer Toolbar for additional IE web development tools.
  29. [UT]* Firebug to assist with testing web applications running in Firefox. Also see YSlow add-on for performance testing and Web Developer add-on for additional Firefox web development tools.
  30. [CA]* FxCop to enforce .NET coding guidelines
  31. [CA] NDepend to get all the static code metrics I'd ever want
  32. [CA] ANTS Profiler for performance and memory profiling
  33. [MD] Enterprise Architect to do UML Modelling and Model Driven Design if required. Alternatively use Visio with these simple templates. 
  34. [MD]* FreeMind as mind mapping tool
  35. [TC]* ScrewTurn Wiki for team collaboration
  36. [QA]* Eviware soapUI for testing of SOA web services
  37. [QA]* WebAii for automated regression testing of Web 2.0 apps
  38. [DP]* Windows Installer XML (WiX) for creating Windows Installers

What other development tools would you add to the list?  Remember, no third party control libraries.

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
Filed under:

Comments

# Armand du Plessis said on December 15, 2006 10:39 AM:

Pretty cool list. Thanks for sharing

# doobiwan said on December 15, 2006 02:20 PM:

Nice list

# trumpi said on December 15, 2006 02:39 PM:

Nice list - I've been wanting to try out Spring.NET for quite a while. Never heard of SourceMonitor, though. Looks good. What all does it do?

# DotNetKicks.com said on December 27, 2006 01:19 PM:

You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com

# bsaksida said on December 27, 2006 02:26 PM:

Nice list.

I found another one:

[ide]Visual Assist - better Intellsence and other options

# Damien Guard said on December 31, 2006 07:59 PM:

Give me AnkhSVN for subversion integration over VisualSVN any day.

[)amien

# Frederic Torres said on January 3, 2007 07:46 AM:

Our tool InCisif.net could make it up to your list.

[TDD] InCisif.net is an automation tool designed to implement client-side functional

testing of web applications under Internet Explorer 6.x or 7.x, using the C#

or VB.NET language with Visual Studio 2003 or 2005.

In the release 1.2 the following new features have been added:

- An interactive DOM viewer available at record time offering support for Ajax applications

- NUnit support (source code available for integration with other test frameworks)

- Support for the Visual Studio Add-in TestDriven.net (source code available for integrating other Add-ins)

To learn more and download an evaluation copy, go to http://www.incisif.net

# Armand du Plessis said on January 3, 2007 11:41 AM:

Well you can just click on edit and change the post as you've done here. I assume you mean bumping it back to the top?

I would suggest rather make a new post and just point out that this post has been updated, otherwise things like links and dates etc are out dated and people linking to the original post might have broken links.

Then keep this post as the definitive list of your "Ultimate .NET Development tools". Alternatively you can create it as an article but the same would apply, you'd need to make a seperate blog post to point out that your list have been updated.

Ping me offline if you want to discuss alternatives. (armandATdotnet.org.za)

# BlackWasp said on January 3, 2007 03:24 PM:

SharpDevelop is one of my favourite IDEs for Windows Forms development

# From the software development trenches said on April 8, 2008 09:28 AM:

Jeff Atwood's post about UI-First Software Development came just about at the right time as I was

Leave a Comment

(required) 
(required) 
(optional)
(required) 

Enter the numbers above: