Current Top Ten

The current "cream of the crop." Stuff that I just can't bear not to tell you about. Some things I'd really like to add to this list, like Continuous Integration, Integration through Messaging, the Single Responsibility Principle, Inversion of Control... the list goes on.
 
But, I just don't know yet how to present those in a 5-7 minute time slice in a way that will make you want to run home and learn more. Once I get that figured out, you can be sure some of those will be on this list.
 

 
  • AutoMapper - When you really strive to write a well-layered application, you find that you have tons of classes that are mostly alike. That sucks. Mapping between them sucks even more. AutoMapper helps to solve some of that sucking.
     
  • Beyond Compare - The best "diff" tool I've found. I use it many times per day. Constantly.
     
  • Interesting Links - Unless you are keeping current by reading blogs and other news in the development world, you're going to be old news. Fast.
     
  • Interfaces Everywhere - This article could use a major re-write, but the principles are still solid. Code to an interface, not to an implementation.
     
  • Mercurial and Kiln - As close to "the cutting edge" as you can get in source control, unless you're one of those Windows-hating Git hippies.
     
  • Moq - Well written code means lots of dependencies. Creating manual "mocks" of those when you unit test is time consuming. Moq does it for you.
     
  • MVC - Specifically ASP.NET MVC - As my 5 year old would put it: "it will own your face - you're a big disgrace, waving your viewstate all over the place! MVC WILL ROCK YOU!"
     
  • NBuilder - A brilliant little tool that helps you prototype more quickly, or even drive your test cases with some fake data. On this list mostly because no one seems to know about it and I want to fix that.
     
  • ReSharper - You can take away my dual monitor before I'd let you take away my ReSharper.
     
  • TestDriven.NET - A debugger's dream. Set a breakpoint anywhere in your code. Right click and step into that method. Without whatever stack of steps it would normally take to get there. All day. Every day. Pure gold. Even if you never write any tests at all.