Scott Hanselman's 2009 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2009UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolListForWindows.aspx

by bdfh42 • 17 years ago

65 28 17 years ago

Given the title there's a surprising amount there that are websites, webapps, Firefox extensions etc.

10ren2• 17 years ago

Notepad2 or Notepad++ or E-TextEditor Just because there are two code editors that have every feature you could possibly imagine (and many many many more) doesn't mean you can't write another one (or three) and be successful.

So, next time a market looks full....

BTW: anyone remember that HN article about a guy who was interested in search, but thought he was too late because altavista had it covered? And then he iterates about 10 of the following successive leaders in search, up to Google, then concludes with: and of course now it really is too late.

CWuestefeld• 17 years ago

Along the same lines, the article offers "It's over and 7zip won."

Wasn't over once before, and PKZip won? And later it was over again, and WinZIP won?

10ren2• 17 years ago

I noticed that one, too. But I think "winning" would really be if MS bought you and incorporated you into the OS (which it has done with an awful lot of stuff).

BTW: there was also one before, that PKZip was based on (actually infringing on its copyright, and ended up being very upsetting to the originator).

mhansen• 17 years ago

Wow, needs to trim down the list a little bit.

3 feed readers? 3 different boot CDs? 5 different launchers? Powershell, cygwin, and grep and tail replacements 'BareGrep' and 'BareTail'?

How many of these does he actually use?

gfodor• 17 years ago

Needs more vim.

nailer4• 17 years ago

Windows has plenty of programmatic text editors that offer most of the features of vim , with better discoverability.

except reliably being installed, which vim isn't on Windows anyway.

ciupicri2• 17 years ago

> except reliably being installed, which vim isn't on Windows anyway.

vim runs fine on Windows

Afton2• 17 years ago

> Windows has plenty of programmatic text editors that offer most of the features of vim

profound disbelief.

jeroen• 17 years ago

"7-Zip - You'll typically get between 2% and 10% better compression than ZIP."

Does anyone really care about compression rates? And what about the fact that noone you send your .7zip's to has 7zip installed?

smiler• 17 years ago

All depends on what you're using it for. We use 7zip all the time at work and it is invaluable and I often see better compression rates depending on the data involved.

I just zipped up an Eclipse workspace .zip using 7zip = 27mb .7zip using 7zip = 6.5mb

We have a VPN to a customer over a dedicated ADSL link (max 300k upload) and daily we are transferring new builds / files. Which would you prefer?

Edit: you can also create a self-extracting 7zip as an executable as well with a very minimal payload (couple of 100k)

ciupicri2• 17 years ago

7zip is the new zip

blasdel• 17 years ago

The real annoyance for me is that the 7zip program's extraction mechanism (for all the formats it supports) writes the uncompressed data twice, and in the penultimate step is using 2x the space.

It's just like a naive compressed tar extractor.

strick• 17 years ago

He left out my absolute favorite, Expandrive. Lets you map any Linux host as a drive letter via sftp. If your box has SSH, it is good to go: http://www.expandrive.com/windows

macco3• 17 years ago

Hackers use a Unix. Ask PG

fake_pg• 17 years ago

Argh...again with the questions.

Yes, "hackers" use Unix-based operating systems. Great hackers also generally insist on using open source software. Not just because it's better, but because it gives them more control. Good hackers insist on control. This is part of what makes them good hackers: when something's broken, they need to fix it.[1]

[1] I copied this from my essay, "Great Hackers" (http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html).

Thanks to Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, and Sarah Harlin for reading earlier versions of this comment.

macco3• 17 years ago

Hey I was just complaining, because I have to a Windows maschine at work. I try to make it behave like a Unix with Cygwin and Emacs, but there are limits. Actually I think the Hanselman List is pretty useless. To use 3 different editors is BS. Get to know one, for every kind of editing.

rincewind• 17 years ago

Please do not create a no-signal-noise-only-persona.

There is a reason why "consultant barbie", "the joke explainer" and "mr i tell you why i upvote" are not here but on reddit.

rjprins• 17 years ago

I'm missing a tool like FARR "Find And Run Robot", to start any program. But I guess Windows Vista and 7 have that now in the start menu. Still FARR has a lot more features.

Also, AutoHotkey changed my life!

http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/

smhinsey• 17 years ago

He refers to these as launchers and lists several.

mikeytown2• 17 years ago

You only need one: http://andLinux.org/

jpcx01• 17 years ago

Fiddler is awesome. Does anyone know of a similar mac tool? I have little snitch, but it doesn't actually let you sniff what contents get sent back and forth. Fiddler killer feature is being able to sniff SSL content as well and decode it (provided you give it the key).

Scott Hanselman's 2009 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

Related Stories