Here are my favorite libraries/tools/SDKs/apps of all time:

  • Microsoft XNA – A very nice and easy way to create games fairly quickly using C# or VB.Net
  • FusionCharts/FusionWidget – Excellent and beautiful data-driven dashboard and chart components. They work with almost any programming language out there. They’re fed XML with the chart/widget data and created on a web page via Javascript and then rendered with Flash.
  • Sun xVM VirtualBox – Like VMWare Workstation but a little more lightweight, and free.
  • Visual Studio Express – Sort of like the "big-boy" version, but free.
  • MySQL – Who doesn’t like MySQL?
  • EMU8086 – An 8086 emulator for writing programs in assembly… if you feel that you ever need to do stuff in ASM, this is a good tool for SAFELY executing and debugging code.
  • avast! Antivirus – This has got to be one of the best anti-virus softwares on the market. Its free, doesn’t bog your system down, and catches practically anything–even nasty stuff on web-pages (if you’re ever browsing on questionable websites).
  • Beyond Compare – The absolute best for side-by-side code comparison and merging source code.
  • Google Chrome – I want to spend the rest of my life with this browser. Its got a few bugs, but man its fast.
  • BOINC – Grid Computing Client
  • GridRepublic – Account manager for BOINC (makes it easier to contribute to multiple projects using the same account)
  • jQuery – One of the best Javascript/AJAX/DOM/UI libraries I’ve ever used. Simple and efficient, cross-browser friendly.
  • Pidgin – My new favorite IM client (formerly GAIM). Hooks into almost every chat network you can think of. I replaced my MSN messenger and Google Talk with this one utility. It is similar to Trillian.
  • Smarty Template Engine – One of the best PHP template engines out there. Easy to use, pretty quick, powerful.
  • Pandora - Free Internet Radio. And the suggestion algorithm is a LOT better than Launch/Yahoo ever was or will be. Downside is that they have ads if you go with the free account and they also have a monthly listening limit which I’ve hit once.
  • Ruby – A language that is beginning to grow on me.
  • Ruby on Rails – A really sweet, fast, and efficient MVC framework for Ruby
  • Heroku – Free Rails hosting for a single app. I use it for development purposes. Manage your app with command line utilities or a web interface. You push your code using GIT and it automatically builds a “slug” which is deployed to their servers. Cool features and very scalable.
  • Unity3D – An awesome 3D game engine for indie developers and commercial developers alike. Very easy to create games quickly and they don’t use some stupid hybrid scripting language like Torque does—Unity actually uses javascript.
And here are my guilty pleasures:
  • Internet Explorer 8 – Microsoft is beginning to get it down, but they’ve still got a ways to go. This browser is definitely faster than their previous ones but their innovative support for new technologies (CSS3 and webkit) is still lacking. IE is sort of the “odd man out” when it comes to browsers since pages will all look the same in FF, Safari, and Chrome but then look different in IE… otherwise it is actually a decent browser (though I hate to admit it).
  • Windows 7 – Yep, its like Vista, but it actually works. Much lower memory footprint and a few new features that I like.
  • Trillian – I know I mentioned Pidgin in the above mentioned “favorites”, but I do like Trillian as well. It has gotten better since the last time I used it. Plus I had problems with Pidgin’s file transfers; it would always crash.
  • iTunes – Bloated MP3 player, but I buy MP3’s from Apple sometimes so I don’t have much of a choice. Plus since Winamp became a much more inflated and “fat” version of what I used to love, I needed to find something different…. I think we have AOL to thank for that.