Day: September 1, 2008

With a nod to John Lam and Shawn Wildermuth for the inspiration, here is a rundown of the things I use on a daily basis to develop software. This includes hardware, software and online resources.

Hardware

Personal Desktop

• Dell Dimension e521
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
• 4GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM
• Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 Video Card
• System HDD – 300GB Seagate Barracuda SATAII Drive
• Data/Media HDD – SATAII RAID1 Mirrored Set of 750GB WD Drives
• Creative Fatal1ty 1010 Mouse
• 20” Widescreen Dell LCD

Work Laptop

• IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T60 15”
• Intel Core Duo T2500 / 2GHz CPU
• 2GB RAM
• ATI Mobility Radeon X1400
• 100GB 7200rpm HDD
• Logitech Cordless TrackMan Optical
• 2nd Monitor: ViewSonic 19” Widescreen LCD

Operating System and Productivity Tools

I run Windows Vista Business (32-bit) on my machines. I don’t currently run Vista Sidebar or any launcher/toolbar applications. I have been getting along well by simply organizing the folders in my Start Menu and putting the items I use frequently in my Favorite Programs section.

Firefox 3 is my default browser, but I’m thinking of giving IE8 Beta 2 a shot at daily use. I have it installed, and it looks quite promising. My must-have Firefox extensions include Adblock Plus, Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures, Download Helper, FFClickOnce, Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer and Greasemonkey.

At the office, I use Outlook 2007 for email, contacts, calendar and tasks. I am beginning to use OneNote 2007 for meeting notes and other task organization & mind mapping activities. Outside of my day job, my email and contacts are in Gmail. I use both Presdo and Upcoming for calendar / scheduling.

I use Windows Live Writer to post to my WordPress blog. It’s simply the best blogging tool for Windows, with tons of great plug-ins available.

MediaMonkey is my media management tool of choice. It’s great for maintaining large MP3 libraries and podcast subscriptions.

I am giving Sysinternals Desktops 1.0 a try to manage multiple desktops on my laptop. I tried another tool a few months ago, but docking/undocking with the second monitor was freaking it out. So far so good with Desktops 1.0.

Developer Tools

I use both Visual Studio 2005 Team Developer SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 Team Developer SP1 using a custom vssettings file I created on Ryan Lanciaux’ Visual Studio Theme Generator online tool. My must-have Visual Studio plug-ins are ReSharper 4.0, GhostDoc and StyleCop. My company uses TFS for feature/bug tracking and source control, MSUnit for unit testing, and CruiseControl.NET for our continuous and daily builds.

My text editor of choice is Notepad++, and I use Paint.NET for all my image editing needs. BeyondCompare is fantastic for comparing files & folders. My group uses it for code reviews as well.

Here is a quick rundown of some other handy tools to keep around, most of which I use quite frequently:

• FileZilla
• visionapp Remote Desktop
• PureText 2.0
• Reflector
• Depender
• Resourcer
• LINQPad
• Sysinternals Process Monitor

The Cloud

• Twitter for random thoughts and blog notifications
• Google Reader for RSS feed reading
• Flickr for posting personal photos
• LinkedIn and Facebook for connecting/re-connecting
• Live Mesh for file sync between machines

How About You?

That’s enough about me. Let’s hear what you use on a daily basis to make yourself a more productive developer.