A Developers Toolkit for C# and .Net
A developer, no matter how skilled, is dependent on the tools at his disposal. There are numerous free tools to aid in .Net development; from source control to debugging to documentation and profiling. Here, I’ve compiled a complete list of tools that I’ve used for years that cover the entire development lifecycle.
C# and .Net are a powerful language and platform for developing software. The high levels of abstraction, garbage collection, architecture, and runtime provide an amazing platform for writing high quality software. It’s a great start, but it’s not enough.
In the end, quality software comes down to developer skill and organization. This article will provide some links to free tools that every .Net developer should have on hand in order to write high quality software. If you don’t know what a tool does, I encourage you to explore it, you may learn something new about source control, test driven development, profiling, continual integration, or debugging that you didn’t know before.
What follows is a best of breed toolkit that I use personally and professionally almost every day. All the tools are freely available for download online (with the exception of the full Visual Studio 2005 suite).