Development Tools

For development I highly recommend using the following tools. Click the associated link to be redirected to the download. The majority of these development tools are free of charge.

Visual Studio 2019 - VS 2019 CE is my primary IDE for building .NET apps and services. Additionally, TFS offers out of box source control, RAD tools, continuous integration, and will take you from scoping business requirements to go live integration.

SQL Server Express - build data driven apps up to 10 GB with this free RDBMS.

GitLab - repository for your projects and workspaces. Clean and sleek UI which is based on Git, hence it is quite powerful. Great alternative to TFS or Subversion.

Postman - need a client to test your Web API?

JetBrains dotPeek - dotPeek is an extremely intuitive managed code decompiler and just one of the multitude of utilities which JetBrains offers free charge. A must have if you need to view the source of a managed DLL.

JetBrains ReSharper: Miles beyond automated code refactoring for VS IDE.

Chrome - my browser of choice featuring a rich development console with a variety of add-ins and extensions.

JSFiddle - do you need an online editor to view the output of your front end code?

OneNote - a wonderful text editor which can synch to all your devices.

.NET Fiddle - working w/o your primary IDE and need to compile some C# source?

JsonLint - online JSON validation.

Stack Overflow - need some insight to a technical issue? The majority of time you will find your question has already been answered.