Valgrind is well-maintained, extremely effectively run-time memory checker. If you are using C,C++, or assembly language on x86 platforms (still Valgrind's primary focus, although they are moving toward other CPUs now), then this shoud be woven into the test scripts. It will keep the memory bugs at bay.
sloccount is a source code line counter and metrics tool. It is effortless to use, and incredibly useful.
SlickEdit is today's gold standard for programmable text editors.
EverNote If you keep notes and ideas and plans in this tool, as you go, you'll also be generating a multi-faceted historical record of projects. And that is something you'll need in order to accurately estimate your next project.
Dreamweaver. Still the top html code editor out there, by a very wide margin. Works really well for general web site maintenance, too.
Subversion The ability to rename both files and directories is really helpful. I recently switched to this, after using Perforce for a few years. The latter is excellent, but Subversion is even better.
Araxis Merge is the best program for two- and three-way file and directory differencing.
CodeSketch is my freely available code generator that creates C, C++, makefiles, unit tests, and even Linux device drivers (compatible with the kernel 2.4.x). It also makes LynxOS device drivers, but that RTOS is now obsolete. (You can get more capable and less buggy systems for free, these days.)
Enterprise Architect for UML diagrams. Better than Rational Rose by a huge margin, but less than a tenth of the price. Very energetically and competently maintained. The Australians have found a great way to make money here.
ThunderBird email client. A nearly perfect email client.
mySQL. This database has grown up. It is now a full replacement for SQL Server, at least up to a certain (unknown) size and concurrency level.
mySQL query browser. Just open up port 3306/tcp on your linux firewall (assuming you're hosting the mysql server on the linux side), and run this query browser from within Windows, for a very capable view of the database.
VMWare Workstation saves time when experimenting with new operating system installations, and while testing installation scripts
Last updated: 11 June 2007