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Developer Software Links Useful software

Here you can find some really handy free software and programs aimed primarily at Windows and .NET programmers. So look away now if you are a Mac pansy :)

  • AstroGrep

    Jealous of your UNIX buddies and their fancy pants Grep searches? Well, AstroGrep is a grep utility for Windows that can very quickly search within files for keywords or patterns.

    AstroGrep supports regular expressions, versatile printing options, stores most recently used paths and has a "context" feature which is very nice for looking at source code.

     Download
  • Beyond Compare

    Beyond Compare is a graphical diff tool on steroids. It allows you to quickly and easily compare your files and folders.  By using simple, powerful commands you can focus on the differences you're interested in and ignore those you're not.  You can then merge the changes, synchronize your files, and generate reports for your records. It's commercial, though.

     Download
  • dotPeek Decompiler

    dotPeek is a new free .NET decompiler from JetBrains, the people behind ReSharper. It seeks to take over from Reflector since RedGate made that product commercial.

     Download
  • Fiddler

    The free web debugging proxy for any browser, system or platform. Debug traffic from PC, Mac or Linux systems and mobile devices. Ensure the proper cookies, headers and cache directives are transferred between the client and server. Supports any framework, including .NET, Java, Ruby, etc.

     Download
  • Filezilla

    FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface.

     Download
  • Git Extensions

    Git Extensions is a graphical user interface for Git (revision control software) for Windows.

     Download
  • HTTrack

    HTTrack is free "website spider" software. It allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer.

     Download
  • KDiff 3

    KDiff3 is a free diff and merge program that compares or merges two or three text input files or directories. A good, free alternative to Beyond Compare.

     Download
  • LINQPad

    LINQPad is a useful environment that lets you develop and run .NET LINQ queries within a simple editor. LINQPad supports everything in C# 4.0 and .NET Framework, including LINQ to Objects, LINQ to SQL and LINQ to XML. And it's free!

     Download
  • Ninject

    There are plenty of IoC containers for the .NET platform, but Ninject wins out by being lightweight, easy-to-use and having the coolest name!

     Download
  • Notepad++

    Notepad++ is a fully-featured and free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by the GPL License.

     Download
  • NUnit

    NUnit is a unit-testing framework for all .Net languages, based on JUnit. It is written entirely in C# and has been completely redesigned to take advantage of many .NET language features, for example custom attributes and other reflection related capabilities.

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  • Paint.NET

    Paint.NET is basically a photoshop "lite" - it's a free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. It also has extensions that allow you to add effects and open formats such as .PSD.

     Download
  • PNG Optimizer

    This is a lightweight tool for reducing the size of PNG graphic files by stripping out redundant information. Can make a big difference!

     Download
  • Postman REST Client

    Postman is a free Chrome browser app for testing HTTP based APIs ie. sending requests and getting back results.  It's great for testing REST APIs and other HTTP based services. And it always rings twice.

     Download
  • Process Explorer

    Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.

     Download
  • SQL Express Profiler

    The free SQL Server Express versions from Microsoft are great for database developers, but lack the profiling tools that come with their paid-for big brothers. However, SQL Profiler for Express solves this problem and provides most of the functionality of the paid-for version.

     Download
  • Visual Studio Code

    Code editing redefined and optimized for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications. Visual Studio Code is free and available on your favorite platform—Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

     Download
  • Xenu Link Sleuth

    Xenu's Link Sleuth checks Web sites for broken links. Link verification is done on "normal" links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets. It displays a continously updated list of URLs which you can sort by different criteria. 

     Download