Remember way back when we had a free decompiler?
- by Justin Jones
I, like probably so many of the rest of you, was mortified when Reflector was sold to RedGate. I knew where it was going. Suddenly you had to install it instead of just download and run it. I had a deep down feeling that one of the most useful tools in my arsenal was about to become a corporate product and no longer belong to the world of free tools. Sure enough it did. For a while now I’ve limped by without my favorite decompiler. This was made a little easier by the fact that you can now debug into the .net framework, but I still missed Reflector. JetBrains, makers of the superawesome and well worth the cost ReSharper (no it’s not free) have made their own decompiler that is comparable with Reflector, and it’s free. It’s still a corporate product, and JetBrains isn’t exactly known for making free software, but for now we have an option back on the table until some other industrious developer makes the next Reflector. dotPeek can be downloaded here. http://www.jetbrains.com/decompiler/