Friday, December 05, 2008
Lots of tools are useful, but here's my favourite 5 tools which I install on every pc I use regularly.
1. Notepad ++
LINK
An extremely useful application which replaces the regular notepad. It has tonnes of language support so that you get colored code in everything from perl to caml to xml. It's VERY quick to load, has a tabbed interface, and is generally lovely to use.
2. Tail
LINK
I'm jealous of a whole bunch of UNIX stuff I don't get access to on a daily basis and tail is one of those things. This windows app lets you 'tail' text files (such as log files), updating the view every time the file changes and always scrolling to the bottom. Debugging through log files is made 100x easier!
3. Winmerge
LINK
Winmerge is the open-source version of 'Beyond Compare' style applications. It allows you to easily compare and merge documents. It's not as feature-rich as beyond compare, but for what this type of tool is typically used for it's absolutely perfect.
4. Google Desktop
LINK
Stay with me on this one! This has improved my productivity 300%, being able to instantly open applications and common files is fantastic. I guess you could also use Windows Live Desktop, or switch to Vista. Personally, I found Google Desktop much faster than the Microsoft alternative.
The most useful bit: Simply press CTRL twice and type:
5. TortoiseSVN
LINK
This is a no-brainer. TortoiseSVN provides incredible Subversion integration into the Windows Shell, it changes folder icons based on item status' handles conflict resolution well, allows you to compare files (even better with Winmerge(see above)), and even enables comparison of Microsoft Office Documents (which is the REAL killer feature. Imagine lengthy functional requirements documents).
BONUS: PuTTY
LINK
SSH into a networked / remote Linux box with ease, you can even do it over t'internet with some help from a dynamic DNS Provider. Not only can you control your 'nix machine, but if you set up some Tunnels you can use it as a http proxy, access the machine's local drives, access shared music and more.
Plus you can make the Windows command prompt extremely jealous.
