There exists also not so good news – this time for PHP developers – support of PHP was removed from release of free (”community”) version of IDEA, so developers can stick with other completely free IDEs this time – for example NetBeans comes to my mind this time… as alternative… but after Oracle buy Sun, I not sure it is right choice… but this is “idea” for another post…)

Actually personally I don’t understand why “Community” version does not support PHP, Javascript, Python or Ruby as this languages are used by a lot (if not most) of “open source” developers that for some reasons does not feet into JetBrains licensing of commercial version of IntelliJ IDEA for open source projects. I think “vice versa” if compare to JetBrains – Commercial version must have extended support for Java development, while Community edition must support MORE other open source frameworks / languages, like Ruby, Python or PHP etc. Sure it’s only my “personal” opinion, but I think most of developers will agree with me – people that use IDEA for Java development (usually in enterprises) can (and will!) simply BUY commercial licenses, while a lot of potential IntelliJ users actually want to use it for small open source projects in non-Java languages stack and want to get IDE for FREE!

But totally – all new features show that JetBrains go in right direction – support for most “progressive” and “latest” technologies in IDEA (even if it is available only commercially )

Keep it going, JetBrains!

Will try to keep this list up to date

Here is it (some of them I grab from my old micro blog at Tumblr):

* Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate (http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/ultimate)

* JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA 9 (http://www.jetbrains.com/idea)

* JetBrains ReSharper 5 (http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper) – best productivity add-in for Visual Studio. Don’t use it and code in .NET? You miss whole world!!!

* Visual Studio 2010 Pro Power Tools extension to VS 2010 (http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/d0d33361-18e2-46c0-8ff2-4adea1e34fef) – amazing features, including vertical tabs for opened files in VS)

* PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2010 (http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/e5f41ad9-4edc-4912-bca3-91147db95b99) – a lot of nice to have and useful features in VS 2010

* VsCommands for VS 2010 (http://mokosh.co.uk/vscommands) – same like above and more

* SlickEdit Gadgets for Microsoft Visual Studio (http://www.slickedit.com/content/view/441) – amazing and free gadgets… mostly i like “line ruler and indentation guide” – just take a look and you will never drop this feature (but first be sure that you enable it!). What’s important is this gadget works well with VS 2005 / 2008 and don’t cause any problems with a lot of other gadgets / plugins! Try it! Cool and Free!

* EntLib (http://www.codeplex.com/entlib) – “Must Use” blocks for Enterprise Software Developers

Cover most of Aspects, like Caching, Logging, Security, IoC, etc… Now I use new version 5.0.

* Moq (http://code.google.com/p/moq/) – best available mocking library for .NET 3.5 / 4 (at least today…….. i pretty sure that still exists in testing / mocking / TDD a LOT of space for creative ideas and implementations!)

* Because spend above too much time (just so like Moq) about testing, here will just put references to NUnit (http://www.nunit.org/) and xUnit(http://www.codeplex.com/xunit). Looks like best what we have now (and what is free ) for unit testing in .NET……. Sure we want more automation, sure we want….

* TortoiseSVN (http://tortoisesvn.net/)  & TortoiseGit (http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit)- best available tool to forget about “command-line” style of SVN / Git (at least in daily usage) – integrates to explorer and give you all options available in SVN / Git and even more…

* AnkhSVN plug-in for Visual Studio (http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/) – working with SVN repositories directly from Visual Studio… Previous versions have problems with performance, but looks like latest versions 2.x have no problems at all!

* Firebug (http://getfirebug.com/) – “You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.”. Any yes, i like it more then IE development toolbar…. not really sure why Maybe because it’s more user friendly (or developer friendly)

* Quartz.NET (http://quartznet.sourceforge.net) Quartz.NET is a full-featured, open source job scheduling system that can be used from smallest apps to large scale enterprise systems.

* Spring .NET (http://www.springframework.net) Spring.NET framework provides comprehensive infrastructural support for developing enterprise .NET applications
A lot of useful modules (you can use them independently from each other) for AOP, Data Access (NHibernate, ADO.NET etc), Web (DIP for Pages etc…),  Testing, Messaging, Threading and even Quartz integration and many more…

If you do a lot of debugging, I suggest to take a look to following tools:

* Crack.NET (http://cracknetproject.codeplex.com/) - A runtime debugging and scripting tool that gives you access to the internals of a WPF or Windows Forms application

* Mole for VS (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/macros/MoleForVisualStudioEdit.aspx) - Visualizer with property editing. Mole is a high performance, full featured, multifunction visualizer that allows detailed inspection of WPF, WCF, WF, ASP.NET, XBAP’s and WinForm applications.

* CPU-Z is a freeware that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system. It is really fast and free way to get info about your hardware! It is also make sense to check another utilities on same site – most are free and useful!

* WiX (Windows Installer XML Toolset) is a Toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code. The toolset supports a command line environment that developers may integrate into their build processes to build MSI and MSM setup packages.

* InstallShield 2010 (http://www.flexerasoftware.com/products/installshield.htm) – my favorite tool to create powerful installers. Exists free, but restricted version. Integrates WELL inside VS 2010!

* Paint .NET – free image and photo editing software (it’s not replacement for Photoshop, but good replacement for build-in Windows paint application with a lot of advanced features)

Post Updated 13/06/2010