Tools every professional programmer must know

[nitro]

I am hoping that in this thread, we put tools, advice, links, whatever, that every professional programmer cannot live without, or at least should know about.

I will start the list with:

Perfmon. http://dotnetdebug.net/2005/06/30/perfmon-your-debugging-buddy/

 

[nitro]

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/Memory_Leak_Detection.aspx

 

[nitro]

I could post a link to every single issue that Perfmon monitors. Here is one that is very relevant in financial multi-threaded programming.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd380616(VS.100).aspx

There is a great book in this. It would be named something like, How to use Perfmon to become a master programmer : Understanding Computer Science through perfmon C# examples.

 

[TrailingStop3]

http://www.wholetomato.com/

and not a tool but good to know:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/concurrency/default.aspx

 

[nitro]

It is really interesting. I just re-factored a bunch of code, and now I have a memory leak somewhere in my code (fully .net mind you), even though all I did was reshuffle stuff around.

Maddening.

 

[TrailingStop3]

Yes - it is a great tool for refactoring and offers lots of other small tools to edit source code - cannot life without...especially since I code native C++

 

[nitro]

CLRprofiler

http://www.dev102.com/2008/05/30/how-to-find-memory-leaks-with-clrprofiler/

 

[nitro]

"A .net memory leak you did not think about"

http://www.dev102.com/2008/03/16/a-net-memory-leak-you-did-not-think-about/

 

[failed_trad3r]

would a software programmer have more chance of making it in trading compared to doctors, lawyers etc.?

 

[nitro]

Quote from failed_trad3r:

would a software programmer have more chance of making it in trading compared to doctors, lawyers etc.?

Less, by my own measure.