The Application that helped your programming the most in 2008

Question

The year is now 2009, happy new year for starters.

However I'd like to hear your opinions on what applications helped you the most 2008. The requirements for the application is that it had a significant release or was brand new in 2008. For new releases to existing applications, please include a note about some significant changes this year.

Also, it could be a framework or whatever you like. So before downvoting this, see this as an information resource on what good applications, frameworks and other parts helped us programmers under the year 2008.

Answer 1

ASP.NET MVC helped me a lot when creating new web applications, even though it's just a beta!

http://www.asp.net/mvc/

Answer 2

Textmate - http://macromates.com/ My favourite text editor ever, it's not new or anything but it's got a few updates in 2008 and also a lot more bundles of plugins. Git integration and more. Brilliant.

Answer 3

Vim 7.2

Edit: Removed Subversion so people can vote on one tool at a time. Subversion is already listed in this answer.

Answer 4

Really looking forward to using MVC myself.

I started my first real programming job so learnt and used the following:

• nHibernate
• Spring.Net
• jQuery!!!
• nUnit

and, of course, Visual Studio! :D

A few others which escape me, but nHibernate is amazing.

Final year project saw me use ASP.Net 3.5 as well, nice.

Oh, and Stack Overflow* :)

*Seriously

Answer 5

Does the python console count? that alone (despite many other reasons) is why I <3 python

Answer 6

Stack Overflow

Answer 7

Firebug

Simply a matter of a right click on the area in which you suspect the source of a problem, inspecting the element, and then look what's going on there. Styles, layout, DOM, etc. all can be accessed easily.

Answer 8

• The .NET Framework 3.5, including Linq to Objects, Linq to SQL, Linq to XML

Answer 9

My Top 5

• Netbeans 6.5
• Notepad++
• jQuery
• Firebug
• CakePHP

Answer 10

TestComplete helped me a lot last year, particularly after developing a decent testing framework for myself and dumping the recorded scripts in mid-2007. If you haven't already gotten into automated regression testing for your apps, i'd throroughly recommend giving it a go. It is so nice to know whether a change that you have made has had any undesirable side affects.

n.b. There are plenty of other cheaper tools than TestComplete for this type of thing out there these days, that have had pretty good reviews. For me, TestComplete has paid for itself ten fold.

Answer 11

Spring as my favorite framework and IntelliJ as my favorite IDE.

Answer 12

git - far and above everything else.

Answer 13

Google Web Search

Answer 14

PowerShell in conjunction with SVN to further automatise patch/installer creation.

Answer 15

PuTTY

I think pretty much every other significant application just got in the way through bad design of one sort or another. I'd specially like to slag off Windows Vista...

Answer 16

I was hired as a web dev in a shop that specialized in Drupal. Before this I was working jobs with less than ideal leadership who insisted we develop our own custom framework. It's so nice to have a GOOD framework to use. Talk about rapid prototyping.

Also JQuery got me over the idea that javascript needed to be replaced.

Answer 17

There are plenty of fancy new frameworks and tools that I have used in the past year that I would love to mention, they come and go with the projects that need them...

However, personally I'd like to give a warm round of applause to the Prototype library. It has transformed Javascript development dramatically, removing many of the cross-browser problems and provides a solid base for many other popular Javascript libraries as well.

Answer 18

Subversion and TortoiseSVN (we were using Visual SourceSafe before). They released version 1.5 this year with some nice features like merge history and partial checkouts.

Answer 19

NUnit 2.5 was just released. (Still in beta, though.) Parallel test execution, a bunch of new attributes for decorating your tests, plus a bunch of new assert methods.

Answer 20

DevExpress eXpressApp Framework (XAF)

http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/Application_Framework/

If you're a .Net developer who writes database-backed Web sites, you've got to check it out.

It takes a few weeks to learn, but after that, it multiplies your productivity.

Answer 21

DevExpress eXpressApp Framework (XAF) and eXpress Persistent Objects (XPO)

No doubt the best tools for .NET developers who write database applications.

Check it out:

http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/Application_Framework http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/ORM

Answer 22

visual studio [duh]

Answer 23

• Resharper for Visual Studio

Answer 24

SourceGear Fortress

Answer 25

started with c++ 2 years ago... Dev c++ (before i found C::B) Code::Blocks Google nuf said? (-:

Answer 26

Eclipse and SO.

Answer 27

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition.

Still the one.

Answer 28

Microsoft Team Foundation Server. Any source control (with project management features) is a big step up at someone of the organizations I've worked with.

Answer 29

Visual Studio 2008 by allowing stepping through Microsoft code

Reflector

WinDbg and SOS

Answer 30

IDE => Komdo, Information => stackoverflow, MVC => CodeIgniter

Answer 31

• Visual Studio
• ReSharper
• Team Foundation Server
• Reflector

Must haves for .net development enviroment.

Answer 32

ado.net entity framework and asp.net MVC

Answer 33

Tools I discovered this year:

For C++: AQTime profiling tools for Visual Studio 2008. Makes optimalizations a breeze.

For PHP: Eclipse PDT + Aptana plugins - really great, free and easily expandable IDE.

Answer 34

For me, a huge productivity booster was Google Custom Search Engine.

I know Google normal search was mentioned before, but with GSE, I created an engine that constrains my search to the several open source technologies I care about (i.e. Alfresco, SpringSource), and allows me easily to filter my search between documentation, forums, etc. Another good example of custom search is searchdotnet.com.

Another tool I can't live without is Total Commander - an amazing programming productivity tool.

Answer 35

ruby-debug - away from debugging by printing for Ruby on Rails applications.

Shoulda - finally doing automated testing in a way that makes sense to me.

---

Extra for ruby-debug:

• Screencast Debugging with ruby-debug.

• Blog entry introduction: "A better Rails debugger: ruby-debug"

• Blog entry introduction: "ruby-debug in 30 seconds (we don't need no stinkin' GUI!)"

• Sitepoint article (3 parts): "Debug Your Rails App With ruby-debug"

Answer 36

JCreator. Couldn't have finished my AP Comp Sci final project without it.

Answer 37

With just one word, "jQuery"

Answer 38

WSPBuilder! If you have tried to hand craft a wsp for deploying solutions to SharePoint, you can really understand the time saver WSPBuilder is.

Answer 39

RegexBuddy, an excellent tool for designing and testing complicated regular expressions.

Answer 40

The Red-gate ANTS profiler.

Answer 41

LINQ to Objects was my favorite new thing last year.

Answer 42

Notepad++

I don't use an IDE anymore. The only thing I miss in it are HTML snippets.

Answer 43

Unison saved me many hours of grief, doing web development on a Windows Vista laptop, and deploying on a Linux server.

Answer 44

Valgrind finds memory bugs and performance bottlenecks. I will no longer write C code without it!

Answer 45

This may not be the answer you were looking for, but Nibbles and Star Merchant on Cymon's Games taught me how to finally make a program that utilizes multiple sources. it sounds funny, but it's one of those things that I've never been able to do right. Now I have.

Answer 46

Komodo Edit, hands down. Made some unwieldy projects actually possible, while staying out of the way the rest of the time.

Answer 47

vim 7.2, MacVim + fuzzyfinder.vim, surround.vim, snippetsEmu.vim etc

Firefox 3.0.X + vimperator + firebug + webdeveloper

Django 1.0.X

MacPorts 1.7

iPython 0.9.X

Answer 48

Django 1.x (especially newforms-admin and a lot of other small goodies), and jQuery. Mac OS X Leopard, perhaps, as I moved for the first time completely to OS X for development and everything else late-2008.

Answer 49

Fogbugz 6.x.

Initially it was free. Then it became like heroin and become a case of what it cost vs. what it made me; profitable and productive.

Like with any tools, you have to use them to get the benefit. Can't say the same for the books I've bought and never read.

I love that it's keyboard driven. I found it to be alot more polished than 5.0, meaning quicker for me to fly through. I dump all my voicemails, emails, logging reports, incoming requests to it in addition to project development and bug fixes.

Otherwise I don't have the patience to use a project management or bug tracking system in the amount of detail that I use Fb. So thanks, if any Fog Creek guys read this.

Answer 50

Mercurial. Switching to a DVCS from Subversion was liberating, to say the least.

Answer 51

I would actually have to say the following aswell:

• Visual Studio
• Experts Exchange
• VTC ( Video Tutorial Application )
• Stack Overflow
• ASP.NET MVC Beta

As ranked.

Answer 52

I am subjected to Windows at work so I can't use my beloved Textmate. A somewhat close (and getting closer) approximation for Windows is E - TextEditor.

Answer 53

I have to say:

• Visual Studio 2008
• Aptana Studio
• Eclipse

Answer 54

TryRuby.
I've been getting into Ruby, and especially Ruby on Rails, and this was a great help when I was away from my home machine - I could keep learning.

Answer 55

Zend Framework.

I want to say more... Xinc, Subversion, PHPUnit and Trac.

Answer 56

For a long time, it's been RefactorPro!. Even though it's not free, it vastly simplifies my refactoring work a great deal. And it has many refactorings that are not in Visual Studio's refactorings. Nifty refactorings like "Rename file to match class name."

Sadly, it comes with that obnoxious bloatware that drives their companion product that I have no use for. Others love it; for me, it's just a distraction. But I'd still recommend it.

(Have to say, though, I prefer Visual Studio's Rename refactoring, as it works with comments. Although I have yet to upgrade to the latest version of RefactorPro!. But I'm doing that right after I post this.)

Answer 57

Enterprise Architect

Answer 58

"TransFusion", release 16.0 of my 22 year old pawnshop management system which consolidated Loan, Purchase, Sale and Invetory tables into one transaction table. (See "Commmon Properties: Consolidating Loan, Purchase..." posting)

Answer 59

Eclipse, Netbeans, Sun Java forums kept things going for me.