What do I use to write software?

I started off with Dbase III, then Borland Turbo C for about 5 years, then when Microsoft Visual Studio v1.0 came out, I moved to that.

I've been using Visual Studio ever since. Coding in C++ and have since moved to C# when that came into existance.

Do I use component? Yes.
Which ones then?

• Telerik http://www.telerik.com/
• Dundas http://www.dundas.com/
• Rebex http://www.rebex.net/

I've also used DevExpress reports, but they peg the CPU to 100% on the webservers when exporting an excel spreadsheet with a lot of data in them, and more often than not, cause a timeout on the ASPX page. So I don't like to use them anymore.

My essential toolkit consists of:

• SVN - Subversion source control http://subversion.tigris.org/
• Winrar http://www.rarlab.com/
• Colour Schemer (web design) http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html
• SQL Prompt http://www.red-gate.com/
• ANTS Profiler http://www.red-gate.com/
• NUnit http://www.nunit.org/
• Microsoft Visual Studio http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/vstudio/default.aspx
• Microsoft SQL Server http://www.microsoft.com/sql/default.mspx
• Microsoft Office http://office.microsoft.com/
• Fiddler http://www.fiddlertool.com/fiddler/
• Expresso regex http://www.ultrapico.com/Expresso.htm
• Hamachi VPN https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/vpn.asp
• FinePrint http://www.fineprint.com/
• All snap http://www.allsnap.org/
• Taskbar shuffle http://www.freewebs.com/nerdcave/taskbarshuffle.htm
• Spinrite http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm
• ReSharper http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Recommended websites:

• CodeProject http://www.codeproject.com/
• MSDN http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.aspx
• SecurityNow http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm
• Sherman's Lagoon http://www.slagoon.com/cgi-bin/sviewer.pl