This is an update on last year’s article
This year I still spent most of my time working in Windows so this list also does not include most Linux tools. A list of changes can be found at the bottom of this page.
Development Environments & Editors
- Visual Studio 2017: .NET projects
- Jetbrains Resharper
- Jetbrains Project Rider EAP: Secondary .NET editor
- Jetbrains PHPStorm: PHP Development IDE
- SQL Server Management Studio: Primary SQL editor
- Jetbrains Datagrip: Alternative SQL editor
- Visual Studio Code: Editor for scripting
- NotePad++: Fast text editor for scripting
- Nano: Command line editor
Developer Tools & Services
- Bash for Windows: Command line tools
- PowerShell: Scripting for windows
- Terminals : GUI RDP Client
- Cloudflare : DNS & Website Caching
- VestaCp : Hosting Control Panel
- Composer & packagist: PHP Package management
- Nuget & ProGet: .NET Package management
- NPM: JavaScript Package management
- Github: Public Source Control
- Gitlab: Private Source Control
- Filezilla: FTP GUI
- wappalyzer.com : Website Checking
- lorempixel.com : Quick placeholder images
- gitignore.io : Quick Gitignores
- runscope.com : API Debugging
- getpostman.com : API Debugging
- punypng.com : Image compression
- pexels.com : Stock Photos
- puphpet.com : PuPHPet: VMs for local PHP Application dev
- jekyllrb.com : Static Site Generator
- regexr.com : Regex building
- jsfiddle.net : JS Sharing
- glot.io : Quick Debugging & code sharing
- justbeamit.com : P2P file transfers
Web Performance
- Papertrail : Universal logging and search
- New Relic : Server analytics & Performance
- Azure Application Insights : Web application performance and monitoring
- gtmetrix.com : Website performance checking
- BlackFire : PHP Performance measurement
- Uptime Robot : Uptime monitoring
- WDT aka Watch Dog Timers : Cron & uptime monitoring
Other Productivity
- Google Services : Keep, Calendar, Inbox, & Drive
- Journey : For recording my thoughts
- LastPass : Password Manager
- ShareX : Screenshots and screen recording
- Gimp : Open source image editing
- Lacie : Local file backups
- Windirstat : Disk analyzer
- Calibre : EBook library
- BulkRenameUtility : Rename lots of files at once
- Feedly : RSS Feed Reader
- Ditto Windows clipboard manager
Communication
- Slack
- Discord
- Groupme
- Telegram
- FB Messenger
- SMS
- Pushbullet : SMS on pc
Changes since last year
- Removed Visual Studio versions 2013 & 2015, I now use 2017 for all of my .NET projects.
- Removed Atom in favor of lighter editors, mainly Visual Studio Code and Notepad++. Atom feels as big and sluggish as an IDE but without the advantages of a full IDE. So I’ve stopped using it entirely.
- Removed Cygwin which I have not been using
- Added Bash for Windows which is incredibly useful since you have all of the advantages that come with the Ubuntu ecosystem.
- Added PowerShell finally and use it pretty frequently for general operations.
- Added Application Insights which has largely replaced New Relic for me. Though I still prefer New Relic for database server and instance monitoring.
- Added NPM which is the defacto standard for JavaScript packages. I also now use it to start my frontend apps, run test frameworks, and initiate builds for them. It’s also very useful for random other commands like rimraf.
- Added Discord for gaming related voice and text chat.
- Added Project Rider which has proved itself to be faster then Visual Studio when working with large .NET projects
- Removed Google Tasks. I’m finally used to using Google Keep and have entirely converted to it.
- Added Feedly for RSS feed reading.
- Added several tools which are not new to me, but were just not on this list. Gimp, Ditto and Bulk Rename Utility.
- Added Calibre which I have finished importing my eBook library into. I keep the library synced between systems with google drive.