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I was born in Bulgaria. My immediate family and I relocated to Syracuse, NY in 1995. I completed high school in Syracuse, and then continued my education at Alfred University. My major at Alfred University was Computer Science. I also obtained a minor in Management Information Systems (MIS) to bridge the gap between technology and the business world. One of my future goals is to extend that bridge by obtaining a Master's degree in Business Administration. Boyan is a DZone MVB and is not an employee of DZone and has posted 26 posts at DZone. You can read more from them at their website. View Full User Profile

12 Essential Free Tools for .NET Developers

02.19.2008
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Over my course of .NET development, I have compiled a list of essential free tools for .NET applications. This is not a the alpha or the omega of tools, just a short list that I feel is essential.

  1. SharpDevelop

    http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/Download
    An open source IDE for .NET. Check out the full feature tour.


  2. Visual Web Developer Express Edition

    http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd
    Stripped down version of Visual Studio that allows you to write .NET web applications.


  3. TortoiseSVN

    http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads
    There is no better Subversion client for Windows. You need this if you are going to use VisualSVN with Visual Studio.


  4. NAnt

    http://nant.sourceforge.net
    .NET based automation tool that has many built in tasks but could be extended with custom code written in any .NET language.


  5. Snippet Compiler

    http://www.sliver.com/dotnet/SnippetCompiler
    Snippet compiler is a small tool to write and execute small chunks of .NET code without creating a Visual Studio project.


  6. .NET Reflector

    http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet
    Reflector is the class browser, explorer, analyzer and documentation viewer for .NET. Reflector allows to easily view, navigate, search, decompile and analyze .NET assemblies in C#, Visual Basic and IL.


  7. Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express

    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c243a5ae-4bd1-4e3d-94b8-5a0f62bf7796&displaylang=en
    Tool for database administration and development from Microsoft


  8. Quest Comparison Suite for SQL Server

    http://www.quest.com/Comparison-Suite-for-SQL-Server
    Compare and synchronize database schema and data


  9. XYPlorer

    http://www.xyplorer.com
    Awesome file manager. The older version is completely free.


  10. Convert C# to VB.NET

    http://labs.developerfusion.co.uk/convert/csharp-to-vb.aspx

  11. NAnt Add-In

    http://www.netlogics.ch/devcenter/display/NLC/NAntAddin
    Visual Studio add-in for NAnt integration


  12. NUnit Add-In

    http://www.netlogics.ch/devcenter/display/NLC/NUnitAddin
    Visual Studio add-in for NUnit integration

More Visual Studio add-ins can be found at 15+ Free Visual Studio Add-Ins and 15+ FREE Visual Studio Add-ins - Part 2

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12 Essential Free Tools for .NET Developers
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Published at DZone with permission of Boyan Kostadinov, author and DZone MVB. (source)

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Comments

Kelly Stevens replied on Mon, 2009/12/14 - 1:54pm

I think it's really great that Microsoft offers a watered down version of Visual Studio and SQL Server Management Studio. While they clearly do not offer the full suite of features that the paid version do, I have found no reason to purchase a version of Visual Studio or SQL Server for my personal use.

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