My favorite software

As of August 24th 2019, my favorite software (besides from Simple DNS Plus and Simple Failover) is:

Software Development

• Visual Studio 2017/2019 - https://www.visualstudio.com
  Awesome IDE.

• Visual Studio Code - https://code.visualstudio.com
  The lighter Visual Studio - better than the big brother for certain things - like editing markdown files.

• SourceTree - https://www.sourcetreeapp.com
  Nice GUI Git client.

• WinMerge - http://winmerge.org
  Great tool for comparing / merging text files.

• SQLite Studio - http://sqlitestudio.pl
  For managing SQLite databases.

• Eazfuscator.NET - http://www.gapotchenko.com/eazfuscator.net
  Obfuscator for .NET code. So much better and more affordable than Dotfuscator.

• Advanced Installer - http://www.caphyon.com
  Nice MSI installer builder at a reasonable price.

• Visual Build Professional - http://www.kinook.com
  Great tool for automating software builds. This just saves me so much time.

• Axialis Icon Workshop - http://www.axialis.com
  Great for converting/creating software icons.

• JustDecompile - http://www.telerik.com/products/decompiler.aspx
  Fantastic tool for finding out what the .NET compilers actually do to your code.

Web development

• Vue.js - https://vuejs.org
  Great for interactive web-pages / web-apps.

• Sass - https://sass-lang.com
  How did I ever do CSS without it?

• Swagger UI - https://swagger.io/tools/swagger-ui/
  For creating REST API documentation.

• tingle.js - https://robinparisi.github.io/tingle
  Great for simple modals.

• PhotoSwipe - https://photoswipe.com
  Great for image galleries with touch functionality.

• Pikaday - https://github.com/Pikaday/Pikaday
  Javascript date picker with no dependencies.

Server software

• SoftEther VPN - https://www.softether.org
  Nice VPN server software.

• Zoom Search Engine - https://www.wrensoft.com/zoom
  Search engine for you own web-site.

• Bonobo Git Server - https://bonobogitserver.com
  Nice Git server built with .NET and runs on IIS.

• Certify SSL Manager - https://certifytheweb.com
  Software to automate installation and renewal of free Let's Encrypt SSL certificates on IIS / Windows Server.
  Of course it has an option to authenticate via DNS by updating DNS records in Simple DNS Plus :-)

Desktop software / Utilities

• VirtualBox - https://www.virtualbox.org
  Amazing virtual machine software for the desktop.
  I prefer to use this over Hyper-V (which comes with Windows 10 Pro) because it is much easier to move virtual machines between host computers. I simply store the VM images on a portable harddisk and move this between host machines as needed. This is possible because VirtualBox (like VMWare Workstation) is a "level 2" hypervisor - meaning that hardware is virtualized. Hyper-V is "level 1" meaning that VMs interface directly with the hardware, and thus are much harder to move to a different host machine.
  I used VMWare Workstation for man years, but VirtualBox does exactly the same, only for free.

• KeePass Password Safe - http://keepass.info
  Great (free) program for storing passwords.
  Storing the (encrypted) password database on DropBox makes it easy to sync between computers and my (Android) phone.

• CutePDF Professional - http://www.cutepdf.com
  I mostly use it for scanning to PDF files, and for merging multiple PDF files into one.

• TreeSize Free - https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free
  Figure out what is using all that hard disk space.

• Macrium Reflect - http://www.macrium.com
  Great software for cloning / migrating harddisks.

• CloudBerry Backup - https://www.cloudberrylab.com/backup.aspx
  For backing up PCs to the cloud. Using this with Amazon S3.

• SyncBackPro - https://www.2brightsparks.com
  For syncing local files and backing up to the cloud.

• VeraCrypt - https://www.veracrypt.fr
  For making an virtual encrypted harddisk - which lives in a file on your regular harddisk.
  Better and cheaper than BitLocker - better because I don't have to encrypt the whole disk (which could cause others problems) and cheaper because it is free and BitLocker only comes with Windows 10 Pro. This is where I keep source code / Git repositories on my laptop. If someone steals the laptop, at least this stuff is safe.

• 7-Zip - http://www.7-zip.org
  Great for working with zip files and other compressed file archives.
  I primarily use this because the built-in function for creating zip files in Windows 10 doesn't work with file names containing non-english characters.

Photography / graphics / video

• Photoshop CC / Lightroom Classic CC - https://adobe.com
  For photos.

• Adobe Premiere Elements - https://adobe.com
  Nice program for basic video editing (clipping, merging, adding titles, etc.)

Web-apps

• Trello - http://www.trello.com
  Fantastic for organizing thoughts, todo-lists, and everything else. With apps for Android and iOS.

• GitHub - https://github.com
  THE Git respository site.

• Exchange online / Office 365 - http://office.com
  Hosted e-mail for your own domain names.

I have tried many different tools in all these categories over the years, and I can highly recommend all of the above over any competitors that I know of. If you know of any better alternatives please do tell me in the comments below - always looking for better toys :-)