Software Tools

• Whole Tomato's Visual Assist (www.wholetomato.com)

  This is an excellent add-in to Microsoft Visual Studio .NET that extends the editor and puts in real IntelliSense and other advanced editing tools.

• Source Dynamic's Source Insight (www.sourceinsight.com)

  If you need to see how large C++, C#, or Java programs fit together, this is the source browsing tool of choice.

• Compuware DevPartner (www.compuware.com/products/numega)

  This is the suite that holds BoundsChecker (error detection), TrueTime (profiler), TrueCoverage (code coverage), CodeReview (static analysis), and Distributed Analyzer (cross-machine analysis). These tools all work for .NET as well as native code.

• Bullseye Testing Technology's C-Cover (www.bullseye.com)

  This is a fantastic native C++ code coverage tool.

• JPSoft's 4NT (www.jpsoft.com)

  This is the ultimate command shell for Windows machines. It's even got a debugger for batch files! On a fresh operating installation, it's the first program I put on the machine.

• Jay Freeman's Anakrino (www.saurik.com/net/exemplar)

  This is the easy way to learn about .NET: decompile it!

• Luts Roeder's Reflector (www.aisto.com/roeder/DotNet)

  Use this for a better ILDASM.

• WiseOwl's Demeanor for .NET (www.wiseowl.com)

  This is Brent Rector's excellent code obfuscator.

• MindReef's SOAPscope (www.mindreef.com)

  If you want to see what's happening with your Web services under the hood, you can't get any better than SOAPscope.

• VMWare (www.vmware.com)

  Instead of having 300 machines in your test lab, buy a few big servers and run VMWare. I've seen several organizations save a ton of money by utilizing VMWare to cut down on hardware costs and yet increase their operating system testing coverage considerably.