Recommendations
This page contains recommendations for applications and tools, favouring free and Open Source alternatives.
Development Staples
- Git for Windows
- NodeJS
Editors
- LINQPad
- Visual Studio Code
Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
- Visual Studio + JetBrains ReSharper
- JetBrains Rider
- IntelliJ IDEA
- Tizen Studio
- Visual Studio Code
Profiling & Debugging
- JetBrains dotTrace
- JetBrains dotPeek
- JetBrains dotMemory
- Debug Diagnostics
- MSBuild Structured Log Viewer
- PerfView
Testing
- JetBrains dotCover
Misc Development
- RegExr is an online tool to learn, build, & test Regular Expressions
- CyberChef “The Cyber Swiss Army Knife - a web app for encryption, encoding, compression and data analysis”
Visual Studio Code
Shell and terminal
- Windows Terminal + PowerShell Core
Browsers & Internet
- Mozilla Firefox
- YouTube-DL
choco install youtube-dl- Extract audio as mp3:
youtube-dl <url> -x --audio-format mp3 - Show available formats:
-F - Download specific format:
-f <formatcode>
Security & Password Management
- Microsoft Authenticator
- Firefox Lockwise
Design & Creative
| Application | Company | License | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Affinity Designer | Serif | Proprietary, one-time purchase. Free trial. | Vector and raster for drawing and illustration. Alternative to Adobe Illustrator. |
| Affinity Photo | Serif | Proprietary, one-time purchase. Free trial. | Photography and raster graphics. Alternative to Adobe Photoshop. |
| Affinity Publisher | Serif | Proprietary, one-time purchase. Free trial. | Print & web layouts and design |
| Clip Studio Paint (formerly Manga Studio) | |||
| Krita | |||
| MediBang | |||
| Paint.NET | |||
| Inkspace | |||
| Blender | |||
| Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve | |||
| GIMP | |||
| Paint Tool Sai |
General
-
7-Zip
-
Araxis Merge
-
GitKraken
-
Chrome Remote Desktop
-
Discord
-
Docker Desktop
-
Voidtools Everything
-
Git for Windows
-
KeePassXC
-
Libby
-
NodeJS
-
OBS Studio
-
Streamlabs OBS
-
VB Audio Voicemeeter & Voicemeeter Banana
-
OpenSSL
-
OpenVPN Connect
-
Parsec
-
qBitTorrent
-
VLC Player
-
VisualSVN
-
WiX, Orca
-
Mozilla Thunderbird
-
Postman
-
Slack
-
WizTree
WinDirStat -
Microsoft Teams
-
Skype
-
Zoom
-
Signal
-
Sumatra PDF
-
Thunderbird
-
OneNote
Utils
SharpKeys
Azure
Azure Portal CosmosDB Emulator DocumentDBImporter DocumentDBStudio
Azure Storage Emulator Azure Compute Emulator Azerite Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer
Hosting
Namecheap
Databases & Data
- Azure Data Studio (formerly SQL Operations Studio)
- JetBrains DataGrip
- SSMS & SQL Server Profiler
- SQLiteBrowser