pouët.net

oh, forgot multirename.

I like the 4 pans of qdir but it's the only thing nice to me if I compare it to tc. And it looks like the usual explorer, which isn't compatible with my mind. Also many oldschoolers coded very handy plugins for tc.

GottZ wins for Teracopy.

i'm quite surprised that a lot of people loves TC but nobody mentioned FAR manager actually..

Never tried it. looks like a working ver. of windows mc with some good plugins. Might have to boot up the win7 box (whom I kidding - haven't stopped playing borderlands or grimrock in weeks) and gig it a try.

Also as well as sysinternals there are some excellent tools at nirsoft.

I wouldn't say it's essential, but Maple has a fantastic convert formula to C code feature, which is great if you're doing heavy maths programming (as you would normally be, if you're coding demos). I'm trying to incorporate as much of this tool as I can into my programming. Writing clear and internally consistent math libraries by using this tool also seems like a smart way to go.

Failing that, Wolfram Alpha is a great but less featured alternative, which I find to be absolutely essential in those tricky situations where the code can't be temporarily hijacked to test out a formula or whatever. Do always use this!

Personally, coding anything non-trivial without Maths support tools like these can be bad news. I've seen horrible code by academics that do calculations in a convoluted, self referential way. For example:

Code that ends up negating itself a lot (-(-(-a))) = -a.
Code that ends up meddling with trig identities: cos(x-Pi/2) = sin(x)
Simplfiable sequences of linear transformations.
Confusion between row and column vectors and orders of operations.
Combinations of the above and more!

Sometimes these are easy to spot, but a lot of the time, these kinds of convolutions nest into each other and you get afraid of even touching that "magical" function in your maths library.

The result is working but difficult to understand code, that can be heavily simplified and improved. So I think it's good to just start off as clean as possible with a tool like Maple, which can do a lot of symbolic simplification for you and most importantly, keep you on that straight and narrow.

This is especially true when you just want to plough on with the coding when it gets late in the night and your brain has switched off. Personally, I wish I'd known about tools like these earlier, it's so much nicer just having that extra confidence in your code.

process explorer

A few more Total commander things I say to people asking me why I'm using it (not necessarily useful but still fun!):

- Open an .avi as an archive, copy the audio track(s) using file copy, each frame as .jpg which you can also use copy (so you can go to frame 30000 and extract it)
- Task manager in the file system (really useful as you can tinker with the windows' properties or select 10 tasks and 'delete' them :))
- Packer plugin to create .iso files
- Services plugin
- Uninstaller plugin (I really forgot how slow and shit the windows uninstaller via control panel is!)
- Autorun plugin
- Packer plugin to create .bat files from file listings (so you can create a plain text dir listing or a complex bat file that processes each file)
- Registry editor

etc etc etc

So yeah, "mc shits on all of them. From a great height.". NOT :P

has somebody mentioned Total commander yet? its the shit. i recently hooked my 47y old female coworker up with it, and she said: dafuq how have i worked all my life without this. true story.

Opus !!!

There's also FreeCommander for the cheap poeple amongst us.

That said:
Ditto for a multi-clipboard in Windows.
for "scroll window the cursor is over" for windows (yeah windows sucks, I know)
[url=http://notepad-plus-plus.org/]Notepad++ is a good text/multipurpose editor.

BBCode fail.

There's also FreeCommander for the cheap poeple amongst us.

That said:
Ditto for a multi-clipboard in Windows.
MouseWiz for "scroll window the cursor is over" for windows (yeah windows sucks, I know)
Notepad++ is a good text/multipurpose editor.

I pretty often use Sysinternal tools to analyze problems, because they make transparent what is happening on a system during a program run:

"The Sysinternals web site was created in 1996 by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell to host their advanced system utilities and technical information. Whether you’re an IT Pro or a developer, you’ll find Sysinternals utilities to help you manage, troubleshoot and diagnose your Windows systems and applications."

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-en/sysinternals

Process-Explorer:


Process-Monitor:


TCP-View:


Portmon:


VVMap:

CSDiff:

"ComponentSoftware Diff (CSDiff) is a free, advanced file-difference analysis tool for Microsoft Windows. CSDiff is a great asset to anyone in need of analyzing changes which have been made between two revisions of the same file or folder. CSDiff is commonly used when analyzing program source files, HTML documents and MS-Word documents."

http://www.componentsoftware.com/products/csdiff/

WinMerge:

"WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle."

http://winmerge.org/?lang=en

PingPlotter:

"PingPlotter Freeware is a high performance, low-overhead traceroute application. It allows you to quickly "trace" the route between you and a target of your choice (a web site, Voice over IP provider, online game server, or similar target), and then continue to collect performance metrics about that route."

http://www.pingplotter.com/freeware.html



----

ZoomIt:

"ZoomIt is a screen zoom and annotation tool for technical presentations that include application demonstrations. ZoomIt runs unobtrusively in the tray and activates with customizable hotkeys to zoom in on an area of the screen, move around while zoomed, and draw on the zoomed image. I wrote ZoomIt to fit my specific needs and use it in all my presentations."

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx



---

Wireshark:

"Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows."

http://www.wireshark.org/



---

ClipSpy:

"ClipSpy registers itself as a clipboard viewer. Nothing magical there. But when the contents of the clipboard change, ClipSpy enumerates all the data formats on the clipboard (there may be many) and displays them all in the left-hand pane. Clicking on a format in the list shows the data that was placed on the clipboard in the right-hand pane. The right pane shows the raw data as well as the ASCII representation, similar to the memory debug window in MSVC. The left-hand pane also registers as a drop target, so you can drag any data from a program that supports drag-and-drop, drop it over the list, and ClipSpy will show all the data that the drag source provided. Again, the formats are listed in the left-hand pane, and clicking a format shows the corresponding data in the right-hand pane."

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/168/ClipSpy



---

MFCMAPI:

"MFCMAPI uses Microsoft's published APIs to provide access to MAPI stores through a graphical user interface. Its purpose is to facilitate investigation of Exchange and Outlook issues and to provide developers with a canonical sample for MAPI development."

http://mfcmapi.codeplex.com/

PSPad:

"PSPad is a freeware programmer's editor for Microsoft Windows operating systems, useful for people who:
work with various programming environments
like highlighted syntax in their source code
need a small tool with simple controls and the capabilities of a mighty code editor
are looking for a tool that handles plain text
want to save time - PSPad offers rich text formating functions
need tool what offer user extension capabilities
want to save money and still have the functionality of professional products because PSPad is free for commercial and government purposes too"

http://www.pspad.com/en/







----

Link Sleuth:

"Xenu's Link Sleuth (TM) checks Web sites for broken links. Link verification is done on "normal" links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets. It displays a continously updated list of URLs which you can sort by different criteria. A report can be produced at any time."

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html



----

FileZilla:

"Welcome to the homepage of FileZilla, the free FTP solution. Both a client and a server are available. FileZilla is open source software distributed free of charge under the terms of the GNU General Public License."

http://filezilla-project.org/



---

UltraSurf:

"Ultrasurf is a product of Ultrareach Internet Corporation. Originally created to help internet users in China find security and freedom online, Ultrasurf has now become one of the world's most popular anti-censorship, pro-privacy software, with millions of people using it to bypass internet censorship and protect their online privacy."

Also good for testing access to an internal website from outside (overseas).

https://ultrasurf.us/



---

IcoFX:

"IcoFX is an award winning professional icon and cursor editor. It is an all-in-one solution for icon creation, extraction and editing. It is designed to work with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Macintosh icons supporting transparency. Create Windows icons up to 256x256 for Windows Vista/7 and Macintosh icons up to 1024x1024 for Macintosh OSX 10.7 Lion. "

http://icofx.ro/



---

PC-Wizard:

"Since 1996 PC WIZARD is among the most advanced system information programs on the market. PC WIZARD is a powerful utility designed especially for detection of hardware, but also some more analysis. It's able to identify a large scale of system components and supports the latest technologies and standards. This tool is periodically updated (usually once per month) in order to provide most accurate results."

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/pc-wizard.html



---

TreeSize:

"TreeSize Free shows the size of a folder including all subfolders and files. In an Explorer-like style, also the wasted space."

http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/?language=EN



---

Dependency Walker:

"Dependency Walker is a free utility that scans any 32-bit or 64-bit Windows module (exe, dll, ocx, sys, etc.) and builds a hierarchical tree diagram of all dependent modules. For each module found, it lists all the functions that are exported by that module, and which of those functions are actually being called by other modules. Another view displays the minimum set of required files, along with detailed information about each file including a full path to the file, base address, version numbers, machine type, debug information, and more."

http://www.dependencywalker.com/

HD Tune:

"HD Tune is a hard disk utility with many functions. It can be used to measure the drive's performance, scan for errors, check the health status (S.M.A.R.T.), securely erase all data and much more."

http://www.hdtune.com/



---

Restoration:

"Restoration is an easy to use and straight forward tool to undelete files that were removed from the recycle bin or directly deleted from within Windows, and we were also able to recover photos from a Flash card that had been formatted. Upon start, you can scan for all files that may be recovered and also limit the results by entering a search term or extension."

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html



----

ct Testscreen:

"Java-Applet to check the monitor for refresh rate and failed pixels."

http://www.heise.de/ct/ctscreen/



---

CSVEd:

"CSVed is an easy and powerful CSV file editor, you can manipulate any CSV file, separated with any separator."

http://csved.sjfrancke.nl/



---

DAEMON Tools:

"Most popular product that offers easy tools for making simple disc image files and emulating virtual CD/DVD drives."

http://www.daemon-tools.cc/eng/home



----

GNU Wget:

"GNU Wget is a free software package for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP, the most widely-used Internet protocols. It is a non-interactive commandline tool, so it may easily be called from scripts, cron jobs, terminals without X-Windows support, etc."

http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/



---

Sloppy - the slow proxy:

"Sloppy deliberately slows the transfer of data between client and server."

http://www.dallaway.com/sloppy/



----

UltraVNC:

" UltraVNC is a powerful, easy to use and free software that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen. The program allows you to use your mouse and keyboard to control the other PC remotely. It means that you can work on a remote computer, as if you were sitting in front of it, right from your current location."

Very fast, almost like MS Terminal-Server, because it allows installation of a virtual graphics driver, that directly connects the client and server.

http://www.uvnc.com/



---

Inno Setup:

"Inno Setup is a free installer for Windows programs. First introduced in 1997, Inno Setup today rivals and even surpasses many commercial installers in feature set and stability."

http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php

- a partner (i need someone to drive me in work other wise I'll be lazy as hell).

Oh, an of course music. For that I use WinAmp and the Stereotool-Plugin:

"Stereo Tool is a professional low latency audio processor that is used by hundreds of FM, AM and web radio stations all over the world, by musicians who use it to process their recordings, and by hundreds of thousands of people who use the free version¹ to listen to music on their PC."

http://www.stereotool.com/



I use the "Maximizer - Wet" preset. You feed your WinAmp with various MP3s with different qualities and volumes and the preset generates the typical soundscape of a radio station, smoothes out the differences and enhances, "excites" the quality of the music:

http://forums.stereotool.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3831

SpaceSniffer is a freeWare and portable tool application that lets you understand how folders and files are structured on your disks.

this is turning into tucows.

I actually made few "discoveries" from the above suggestions

SHOW US YOUR SOFTWARE!

not really a developer tool but i cant live without it anymore (esp at work):
ClipX
basically it remembers the last n clipboard entries and lets you choose from them.