The tools I will use

Since my new project is starting and I aim to start it the right foot. The right foot being planning before jumping down in the mud. In this post I will document some of the tools I will be using during development. The list might grow and I probably will make another post in the end[sic] explaining the tools I ended up using after all.

First and most important : The very humble and well respected Visual Studio

It's simply the best IDE I've ever used. First because it is very complex (which I like) and when you get to know it it is very easy to use. The IDE really completes the programmer, IntelliSense works like a charm. You can also add extensions which can be very useful. In the screenshot above you can see I'm using ReSharper, this extension is a little manager that looks at your code and gives you advice on how you can optimize your code. It's a really good extension and really helps me when I need to refactor a piece of code or make it more readable. Check it out here, unfortunately it's a paid product and you need to pay a hefty sum to use it. I only have 8 days left on my trial, after that I'll have to get back to normal.

ZScreen, the screenshot application.

ZScreen is a very good application when you need to take screenshots on the fly. You don't need to press print screen and open paint, paste it and modify it. Just press the a hotkey and it will execute what commands you told him to do. I chose to save it automatically in a folder when I press [prt scrn] so I can browse my screenshots of the day and modify them. In the end, they probably get sent on this blog ! It's freeware so I encourage you all to give it a try.

GitHub and GitExtension

As you all probably know I usually use Git as my preferred source control provider. It's really useful to have a repository of code on projects, even the smallest ones, because it gives you an overview on what has been done and how. Having a complete history of the project's changes is awesome and being able to revert back any changes is always useful. I don't need to comment 200 lines of code just because I don't need it or might need it in the future. I can safely erase it and get it back from the repository when I need that piece of code.

Github is a host server of repositories and GitExtensions is my GUI of choice. I can see the timeline very clearly and any branches can be inspected at ease.

So there we go, those are the tools I plan on using immediately. Among them, not tools but technologies I should mention is that I am using C# now with the XNA framework. This makes creating games much easier and streamlined. Big change from vb.net I know, but it's for the best. Giving visual basic up was one of the best decisions I could have made. So keep up with me, I'll try to make the code as easy to follow as I can.

My Tools

The IDE

IDE for Integrated Development Environment, is the "main tool" used for programming. It is the workbench in which you will code and look at the results. Nearly every language have an IDE, many languages indeed have many of them. The one I am using is the Visual Studio 2010 from Microsoft. 

Visual Studio 2010 - Ultimate

This is the release candidate for the 2010 version of Visual Studio. This include the Team Suite. The Team Suite is the set of tools to work with a Team Foundation Server, I manage one and I use it to share all my projects with different computers. It is a very powerful version control system. 

Team Foundation Server

Team Foundation Server is a version control software. In layman's terms, it keeps your projects sync'ed between computers. How it works is that you first upload a project to a Collection. A collection might contain many files and VB projects. When you want to work on a project you do a "Check-Out" of the files you need. While the files are checked out, no one can save any modifications to it until files are checked back in.  

Red Gate's Reflector

This tool is a decompiler made specifically for .net assemblies. What a decompiler does, is that it shows you the software source just by looking at the .exe or .dll.  You can understand that it is a very powerfull tool to inspect other's people code without having the source code. This decompiler works only with .net assembles. 

Sandcastle

Sandcastle and its GUI package is a software that will go through your project's code pages and generate .htm files out of your XML comments. This is very useful for publishing documentation.

SQL Server

SQL Server is what helps me with the configuration and use of the Team Foundation server. It allows me to create databases for each collection.