Dana Kowalski has started a very interesting and timely discussion on those little programs you just can’t live without. Coincidentally, I learned about an interesting hot key app called AutoHotKey while talking to Gerry Gurevich and Jim Priest at TACFUG just last night. Gerry told me how a developer at Lockheed Martin used AutoHotKey to automate a very annoying internal process. On my way home, I had the feeling there are a lot of tools that would make my life easier if I only knew about them. So thanks to Dana Kowalski for starting this meme.
Here is my short list of Must Have Tools
Tree Comp
TreeComp is an interactive utility to keep 2 directory trees and the files within the directories in sync.
The combined tree is displayed using a treeview control with icons indicating the status per directory. Programs to view the differences (i.e. Microsoft’s WinDiff or WinMerge) between files with the same name can be launched by double-clicking, as well as editors for a file residing in one of the 2 trees. After inspection files can be copied/deleted interactively as desired.
WinMerge
WinMerge is an Open Source visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms. It is highly useful for determing what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions.
CFeclipse
An Eclipse plugin for CFML. It also has a host of integrations and is an optional include in Flex Builder 3 Beta Standalone.
Subclipse
Subclipse is an Eclipse Team Provider plug-in providing support for Subversion within the Eclipse IDE. For access and administration of Subversion Repositories, Subclipse is the choice for Eclipse users.
mIRC
mIRC is a highly configurable IRC client with a *nice* and clean user interface. mIRC has recently been updated to version 6.3 . The newest version runs extremely well and has a smoother more elite feel.
To help consolidate the information, I am going to post the link to this article back at Dana’s blog. How about you? what tools do you find indespensible?