[p2p-research] My favorite open source and free tools for software development

[Ryan]

  Sent to you by Ryan via Google Reader: My favorite open source and
free tools for software development via Balfes.net by Bob Balfe on
12/2/09

It seems this list gets more interesting each year and this year I made
a pretty big change in my “favorites”. The reason I love this list is
because anyone, even kids, can start to learn programming or software
for free. This includes business programming, graphics, office
automation, game programming, web development, etc. I wish I had these
kinds of tools 20 years ago.

Eclipse and Java


At the top of the list has to be Eclipse, I solely use it for 99% of my
development - even looking at and editing native code for Notes and
Domino. It is by far my most useful tool for all kinds of software
editing. Granted I use it mostly for Java development but with the many
projects you can install into it you can pretty much do any kind of
development. Eclipse is also the base platform under many commercial
products like Lotus Notes, Lotus Expdeditor, Lotus Symphony, and Lotus
Sametime.

Firefox

This web browser should arguably be at the top of the list. I use it
every single day on all of my computers. I think its the best browser
out there and of course it is free! It has a ton of plugin support and
is a very fast and reliable web browser. I could probably write an post
about my favorite plugins just for this great piece of software.

Lotus Symphony and Open Office

At the start of 2009 I started using Lotus Symphony solely for all of
my work at IBM instead of Microsoft Office. I still use Open Office at
home on my machine and for my kids. They use it for all homework and
other little projects. In short, both of these are great tools and in
my mind a must have for all people and businesses. They can do more
than the 80% of what most people need in an office suite, I would say
it is well above 90% at this point. So if you are paying for an office
suite like Microsoft Office then you are most likely wasting your money.

Graphics editing - GIMP

By far the most popular graphics editing tool on the open market is
GIMP. It is arguably “better” than PhotoShop and for the price it is
unparalleled. I use to use Paint Shop Pro and Microsofts Image Composer
for the longest time but some time last year I started using GIMP
exclusively for graphics and screen mockups. I still have Image
Composer installed and have used it a few times but I think I will be
uninstalling it shortly.

Remote Desktop - TightVNC

I do use the built in Microsoft Remote Desktop software a lot but many
times I use TightVNC to share between developers or take control of a
customers machine. This is by far the best open source remote desktop
software.

The play list:

Other tools on my list but I don’t necessarily use daily. I play around
a lot and learn from many of these. Either way, these are great things
to share and pass on to people who have interest in software
development.

MySQL - 100% free and open source database. I actually use this on
balfes.net for a few things but that is about it. You can obviously use
it for any relational task.

ImageMagick - great tool where you can convert images between formats
using scripts or your language of choice. If you want to write graphics
applications this library will be key for you.

Audacity - this is an awesome tool for editing audio files. I actually
used this to create ring tones for my old windows mobile phone. This
application also has a lot of plugins available to extend its
capabilities.

Blender - want to write computer games or become a graphics artist for
games and movies? Start with Blender, its an awesome application that
will teach you all of the basics.

Unreal Development Kit - I just started playing with this again this
past year. This is arguably one of the best game engines on the market.
Many 3D based games use this engine. It comes with a world editor, a
script language, and libraries to bind with. You can pretty much create
amazing games and animations with this free kit.

If you are really interested in free software you can check out “Best
Open Source Software” page, it has a lot of software categorized for
easy browsing.

technorati tags: eclipse, free, Open Source, tools

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