Dev tools worth buying for myself?
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There's always a moment at any job where there's a tool I'd really like, and I'd wonder whether I should just buy a single license and put that on my resume...
Does this make sense?
The most recent one: I made good use of the Balsamic trial and the customer really liked it...
Would anyone recommend to do this, and what kind of tools would they recommend personally owning, and is there any way I could get a break on taxes even though I'm not a contractor. Anything else I didn't think to ask?
What tools would benefit me worth buying a single license?
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@xaade The ones I've bought for myself:
- Textpad. ~$16. If I have to use Notepad I will, but the text formatting and regex find/replace is worth it.
- BeyondCompare - $30 - The best diff/merge tool I've ever used. I won't touch anything else
- mIRC - Something, plus you can find discount coupons for, like, 50% off. I've been using mIRC for, like, 20 years, so I was happy to buy a license. It's the best program for
cybersexvisiting support channels.
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@xaade said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
I should just buy a single license and put that on my resume
The only tools you will have to buy a license to put on your resume are university degrees.
@Lorne-Kates said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
BeyondCompare - $30 - The best diff/merge tool I've ever used. I won't touch anything else
Yes, one of the few tools I pay for (mainly that and PyCharm) and use them on Linux at home.
For Windows users BeyondCompare is a must-have, how do they even live without a proper rsync?
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@xaade If you're a USian, you can claim the purchase on your taxes as an unreimbursed expense ... assuming you itemize.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
mIRC
If you let the trial expire, mIRC itself gives you a discount
One thing to keep in mind with personally licensing stuff is that sometimes you'll not be able to actually use that license at work.
I'd buy stuff personally if I needed to get extra experience in something outside of work, otherwise not.
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If you ever do any C++ or, dare I say, C, I've heard that CLion is pretty good.
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@loopback0 said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
@Lorne-Kates said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
mIRC
If you let the trial expire, mIRC itself gives you a discount
One thing to keep in mind with personally licensing stuff is that sometimes you'll not be able to actually use that license at work.
I'd buy stuff personally if I needed to get extra experience in something outside of work, otherwise not.If you work at a company large enough to give a shit about that, you can probably just file a request with IT to buy you the software.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
- Textpad. ~$16. If I have to use Notepad I will, but the text formatting and regex find/replace is worth it.
I tend to stick to Notepad++, Vim or Sublime as a powerful trio.
Sublime does cost $70 though.
- BeyondCompare - $30 - The best diff/merge tool I've ever used. I won't touch anything else
KDiff3 (free!) here, the UI is somewhat terse but the functionality is there for sure.
Also note that BeyondCompare $30 standard edition doesn't seem to include 3-way merge.
One thing I bought a while ago is a license to Total Commander. Sure it's interface is archaic, but it's a great tool to throw around files quickly when your IDE appears to be lying to you.
If you're a .NET dev, Resharper or one of the other dev tools might be worth investigating. Some features I use are completely lacking in Visual Studio or community extensions (It does make VS slower though).
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Sublime Text is the big one I have paid for. Well worth the money and it has plugins for just about anything.
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This is still pretty dang cool.
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Tableau. Buy it and BLOW AWAY co-workers expecting shit from Excel or open source graphing tools. (Con: expensive. $1000 for a license.)
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SublimeText. Self-explanatory.
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(If you work with AWS at all) CloudBerry's various AWS tools are generally very good. CloudBerry Online Backup is amazingly excellent and inexpensive.
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Second Aliceif's suggestion of LinqPad. Good shit.
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@LB_ said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
If you ever do any C++ or, dare I say, C, I've heard that CLion is pretty good.
As long as you use CMake as your build system.
Personally, I have a license for all Jetbrains products (CLion, IDEA, ReSharper and all specialized versions of IDEA). 250€ for the first year if you are a new customer, but totally worth it.
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@asdf said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
Personally, I have a license for all Jetbrains products (CLion, IDEA, ReSharper and all specialized versions of IDEA).
Not all of them then. PyCharm is the greatest one.
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I've thought long and hard about buying my own MSDN Enterprise license. It took me YEARS to get to the top of the MSDN SKU tree with WtfCorp's bureaucracy, despite needing some of those fucking features.
It only ever actually happened because they discontinued Ultimate.
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@dse said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
@asdf said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
Personally, I have a license for all Jetbrains products (CLion, IDEA, ReSharper and all specialized versions of IDEA).
Not all of them then. PyCharm is the greatest one.
It's probably included - I've got the same thing (it's the "all JetBrains tools" license) and yes, it's totally worth it if you work with any of the languages they support
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@rad131304 said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
If you're a USian, you can claim the purchase on your taxes as an unreimbursed expense ... assuming you itemize.
It's a Miscellaneous Deduction, so unlikely to amount to anything. You'd need more than 2% of your AGI in such things for them to have any effect.
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@sloosecannon
+1 for jetbrains ide's
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@Greybeard That's not hard to accomplish.
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- Keyboard
- Monitor
- Hard drive or SSD with enough space for your shit
- Possibly also a motherboard, CPU, and RAM.
All the software I use for software development is free.
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@ben_lubar
And we're freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, free loading!Filed under: open source movement
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@Weng Certainly would be hard to accomplish with the $30-$70 purchases people are talking about here.
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@Greybeard I mean, I'm talking about $1-6k annually worth of MSDN. And the "all access" licenses from other vendors ain't cheap, either.
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@Weng Sure, if your employer makes you subsidize them like that, you'll be able to deduct the portion over 2% (less any limitation of deductions). And you'll be able to take the other Miscellaneous Deductions.
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@Weng said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
It took me YEARS to get to the top of the MSDN SKU tree with WtfCorp's bureaucracy, despite needing some of those fucking features.
It only ever actually happened because they discontinued Ultimate.
...I suppose you'd be jealous if I mentioned that, as a junior Java web developer, I was somehow given an MSDN Ultimate license (and then Enterprise when Ultimate went away)?
Actually, now that I no longer work there, I wonder if I still have access to that MSDN Enterprise account...
Edit: Yup and the expiration date is listed as mid-2018.
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@Greybeard said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
It's a Miscellaneous Deduction, so unlikely to amount to anything. You'd need more than 2% of your AGI in such things for them to have any effect.
You may be surprised, they add up.
@Greybeard said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
Certainly would be hard to accomplish with the $30-$70 purchases people are talking about here.
Well, yeah, if they only included IDE's and other cheap tools. But a partial list of things that people might be overlooking includes:
work-related travel, transportation, meal, and entertainment expenses
business liability insurance premiums
depreciation on a computer or cellular telephone your employer requires you to use in your work
dues to a chamber of commerce if membership helps you do your job
dues to professional societies
education (work-related)
home office expenses for part of your home used regularly and exclusively in your work
expenses of looking for a new job in your present occupation
legal fees related to your job
malpractice insurance premiums
a passport for a business trip
subscriptions to professional journals and trade magazines related to your work
tools and supplies used in your work
union dues and expenses, and
work clothes and uniforms (if required and not suitable for everyday use).Some of those are not applicable to our field, but if you keep track of everything over the course of the year they can add up very quickly.
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@powerlord As far as expiration dates go... WtfCorp never licenses anything for more than 1 year. We failed to renew on time our entire fucking Enterprise Agreement with MS earlier this year.
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@Polygeekery said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
But a partial list of things that people might be overlooking includes:
Nope, nope, nope: a whole bunch of nope.
I did spend a little under $300 on a keyboard once. At the end of the year it was "Miscellaneous Deduction; Argh!"
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I'd like to humbly mention the tool I have for sale: Coder's Stone. It's a programming language quick-ref/cross reference for iPad.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/coders-stone/id1025387750?mt=8
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One tool I used at my last job and really liked was Snagit. $50 seems like a lot for a screen capture program, but it was really great. Made it easy to annotate and saved all your captures.
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@Weng said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
@powerlord As far as expiration dates go... WtfCorp never licenses anything for more than 1 year. We failed to renew on time our entire fucking Enterprise Agreement with MS earlier this year.
Ours had been for 1 year until the Ultimate to Enterprise transition at which point they probably said "screw it" and went for 3 years.
Honestly, I'm not exactly clear how our licensing worked. I know my ex-employer had an enterprise-wide license for Office 365, but I think my office had its own MSDN licenses. Then again, we had a number of other contracts with Microsoft just for our office, so I guess I'm not really surprised. Although, I'm still not clear why we had a contract for Bing Maps when we created our own mapping data and used ArcGIS to display it in most apps.
Actually, I should make a Sidebar WTF thread about how our applications shared map data at some point.
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@slapout1 said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
One tool I used at my last job and really liked was Snagit. $50 seems like a lot for a screen capture program, but it was really great. Made it easy to annotate and saved all your captures.
It's a shame I don't really know C++ that well. I live 10 minutes from TechSmith's offices and they're the ones who make Snagit... and it seems like they're always looking for developers.
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@powerlord said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
and it seems like they're always looking for developers.
Because they can't find any? Or because high turnover? The latter could make that 'not a shame'...
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Well hell if were doing hardware...
Sidenute. Scrolling sucks on mobile. Every swipe brings the sidebar out a touch which flashes jellypotato.
Anyways... My first job 17 years ago i bought an ergo mousepad with wrist support. It has a removable gel pad that you can microwave or freeze. I cant imagine using a computer longterm wo that support.
Also a good pair of noise cancelling earbuds
And a drawer full of snack
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@Lorne-Kates said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
Sidenute. Scrolling sucks on mobile. Every swipe brings the sidebar out a touch which flashes jellypotato.
It still sucks for you? I currently have no problems, they disappeared a while ago. In hindsight that may be that I've been conditioned to scroll differently.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
And a drawer full of snack
oh yes, this is an absolutely essential dev tool.
and while you're at it you may want to stash a flask of something alcoholic in there, for emergency use only obviously.
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@accalia said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
@Lorne-Kates said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
And a drawer full of snack
oh yes, this is an absolutely essential dev tool.
/me doesn't have a drawer full of snacks
/me doesn't have a drawer at all
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@RaceProUK said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
/me doesn't have a drawer at all
.... QUICK! TO IKEA! THIS TRAVESTY MUST BE FIXED POST HASTE!
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I've got SublimeText, although I'm not sure of the future of that program since Atom.io and Visual Studio Code are seeing so much development. And Adobe Brackets, I guess, but that seems so focused on Javascript and web development I'm not sure it's ever going to be useful as a generic text editor. I don't think Sublime is going to survive the competition. Today I'm mostly split between Sublime and Notepad++.
If I still needed to work with multi-gigabyte text files, I'd probably get UltraEdit. You've got to configure it a bit to optimize large text file performance (i.e., disable syntax highlighting, line numbers, and a few other such things) but once you do it works very well.
I've seriously considered both Beyond Compare and Reg Ex Buddy. I just don't need them quite often enough to justify it, however.
I'm about 50% DBA. if I my workplace didn't pay for it or I were a consultant, I would probably have to get Aqua Data Studio on my own. I've not used the Redgate offerings, however.
If you'd asked me 3 years ago, I'd have said Vmware Workstation. Today, I'm not so sure. It's not that I'm a fan of VirtualBox -- I'm not -- but I just don't often need a VM like I used to as my job has changed.
I use GreenShot for screenshots, which is FOSS, but I really prefer it to any other screen capture tool. I have an ancient license for HyperSnap, and I've used Snag It before as well. GreenShot just works better for me.
I'd actually like to have a license for SSMS Tools Pack, but I refuse to buy anything off of Paypal. I have had too many bad experiences with Paypal to ever use it again.
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@accalia said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
and while you're at it you may want to stash a flask of something alcoholic in there, for
emergencydaily use only obviously.FTFY
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@Polygeekery said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
@accalia said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
and while you're at it you may want to stash a flask of something alcoholic in there, for
emergencydaily use only obviously.FTFY
you may have fixed it for you, but not for me.
if i'm working at a place i need to imbibe just to make it to 1600 then i'm spending a good chunk of my day looking for a new job.
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@accalia Yeah, my boss is such a dick that I have to drink.
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@Polygeekery ..... aren't you your boss?
or am i mixing your working situation up with someone elses?
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@accalia said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
aren't you your boss?
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@RaceProUK said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
/me doesn't have a drawer at all
Me neither. But we do have a kitchen with many snacks! (Fewer choices now, but still a good selection)
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@BaconBits said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
I've seriously considered both Beyond Compare
I've debated - but WinMerge has sufficed so far...
If you'd asked me 3 years ago, I'd have said Vmware Workstation
IT has been reluctant to upgrade mine (I expensed the last upgrade). I'm now converting to Hyper-V since Visual Studio wants that for its emulators)
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@accalia said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
aren't you your boss?
or am i mixing your working situation up with someone elses?I also regularly share my office with a guy who frequently smells like poop. Then he expects me to clean him up.
Shitty working conditions.
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@Polygeekery said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
I also regularly share my office with a guy who frequently smells like poop.
....
......
..
oh!
Well yeah, there's that.
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@dcon said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
@BaconBits said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
I've seriously considered both Beyond Compare
I've debated - but WinMerge has sufficed so far...
Yep, same here. Well, that and Excel's Spreadsheet Compare and Aqua Data's results compare.
If you'd asked me 3 years ago, I'd have said Vmware Workstation
IT has been reluctant to upgrade mine (I expensed the last upgrade). I'm now converting to Hyper-V since Visual Studio wants that for its emulators)
I just haven't needed one. I've got the Android Hyper-V installed, but it errors when it starts. Apparently the old VMWare virtual switch that's still installed is pissing it off and it can't decide what IP address to bind to, but I don't have the patience to uninstall the emulator, everything from Hyper-V, everything from the old VMWare installation, and then reinstall Hyper-V and the Visual Studio Android Hyper-V widget. Whenever I have six hours free or really need those emulators working, I suppose I'll do that.
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@xaade a sampling of software I have bought for my own personal use, that I also use at work (and I uninstall when I leave):
-"Copy Path To Clipboard" (insanely handy)
-"Beyond Compare" (This was more handy before we upgraded to a version of TFS that did side-by-side comparions, it is still handy for stuff outside of TFS, though)
-"FileSearchEX" (Brings back the traditional (or, outdated, as my good friend Blakey would say) style of search from the windows XP format, you get the usual list of filters, and search options, it is FAST, and you don't have to fuck around with the god-awful windows indexing crap, or forcing it to search in areas it doesn't want to search in. Also searches any path it can get to (network, etc.) I LOVE it)
-"MultiMonitor Taskbar Pro" Extends your taskbar to both screens. MOVES the icon for the applications running, to whichever screen the application is ACTUALLY on. Adds a handy button to the menu bar of all applications, to allow you to quickly move apps from one screen to the other
-"Textpad" (this was handier before Notepad++ rose to power, I still use Textpad for some occassional sorting tasks, and for some complicated macros I defined in it that I can't be arsed to re-do in Notepad++)
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@Vaire said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
Copy Path To Clipboard
Like shift+right click, copy as path?
@Vaire said in Dev tools worth buying for myself?:
Extends your taskbar to both screens. MOVES the icon for the applications running, to whichever screen the application is ACTUALLY on
Like Windows 8+?