.NET "must-have" development tools
- by nzpcmad
James Avery wrote a classic article a while back entitled Ten Must-Have Tools Every Developer Should Download Now which is a companion to Visual Studio Add-Ins Every Developer Should Download Now and Scott Hanselman has an excellent list on his blog but if you were on a desert island and were only allowed three .NET development tools which ones would you pick?
Update: Assuming you already have an IDE like Visual Studio ...
Update (5) : Up to 08/01 : The current state of play:
Reflector 13
Resharper 9
NUnit + TestDriven.Net 7
Refactor Pro 4
Process Explorer (other Sysinternals) 3
SnippetCompiler 3
CodeRush 3
MSDN Library 2
LinqPad 2
Cruisecontrol.net 2
VMWare 2
RhinoMocks 2
Fiddler 2
PowerShell 2
PowerCommands for VS 2008 1
Sandcastle 1
SQL Profiler 1
Redgate ANTS profiler 11
NCover 1
VisualSVN 1
Rubber Ducky 1
WinMerge 1
NAnt 1
ViEmu 1
AnkhSVN 1
dotTrace Profiler 1
BeyondCompare 1
DPack VS Plugin 1
WCF Trace Viewer (SDK) 1
xUnit.net 1
SourceGear DiffMerge 1
Ghostdoc 1
Expression Studio 1
XAML Pad 1
KaXaml 1
Blender for 3D modeling 1
Snoop a WPF tool 1
DiffMerge 1
DPack 1
NDepend 1
Kodos 1
WatiN 1
HTTPWatch Basic Edition 1
Paint.Net 1
Mole For VS 1
What I find particularly interesting about this is that "NUnit + TestDriven.Net " is right up there in third place which shows the growing emphasis on testing as an integral part of the development process rather than as an adjunct which is simply bolted on.
And I'm somewhat perplexed that Codesmith didn't receive a single vote?