31 Jan 2024

Top 11 Tools For .Net Development

Top 11 Tools For .Net Development

What is .Net Development? 

.NET is a versatile and free developer platform that works across different platforms. It's open source, meaning the inner workings are freely available for anyone to see and use. Using .NET, you can create various types of applications, such as those for the web, mobile devices, desktops, games, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

There are four main types of .NET: .NET Framework, .NET Core, Xamarin, and Universal Windows Platform (UWP). These are like different versions or flavors of .NET, each with its own strengths and purposes.

.NET Framework: This is a type of .NET that's been around for a while. It's mainly used for building Windows applications.

.NET Core: This is a newer and more modern version of .NET. It's designed to be used for a variety of applications and can run on different operating systems.

Xamarin: This is for building mobile applications, and it's part of the .NET family. You can use it to create apps for iOS and Android.

Universal Windows Platform (UWP): This is focused on building apps for Windows devices, like PCs, tablets, and even some game consoles. When you hear about the .NET development platform, it refers to the combination of these different types of .NET. Each type comes with its own set of frameworks and libraries, which are like tools that make it easier to build different kinds of applications. So, it's like having a toolkit with everything you need to create a variety of software.

Due to their modular design, developers can create scalable, dependable programs that operate on a range of platforms and gadgets. Because of its adaptability, .NET is a popular choice in the software development industry because it makes it easier for developers to create a number of present-day solutions.

Some important .net development tools:

1. Visual Studio:

.NET developers can develop mobile apps, desktop apps, Games and IoT using Visual Studio.  Visual Studio. NET is a Microsoft-integrated development environment (IDE) that can be used for developing consoles, graphical user interfaces (GUIs), Windows Forms, Web services and Web applications. Its flexibility across different source control systems, including Git, makes it a user-friendly and crucial tool for efficiently managing branches. If you use Visual Studio for writing HTML, CSS, Javascript, Typescript and more, you'll find extensions that provide numerous features, making coding more enjoyable and straightforward.

2. Visual Studio Code:

VS Code users can add .NET support by installing the C# Dev Kit extension. The C# Dev Kit brings    productive and reliable C# experience to VS Code, facilitating C# or multi-language development in VS Code. Visual Studio Code is a lightweight but powerful source code editor which runs on your desktop and is available for Windows, macOS and Linux. Visual Studio Code highlights keywords in your code in different colors to help you easily identify coding patterns and learn faster. You can also take advantage of features like IntelliSense and Peek Definition, which help you understand how functions can be used, and how they relate to one another.

3. NuGet:

NuGet is the official package management system for .NET development. This includes a platform and tooling to help .NET developers create, publish, consume, and share reusable code. The format in which the code is bundled is called a NuGet package, which is simply a shareable unit of code.

4. LINQPad:

LINQPad is a popular software tool developers use to write and test LINQ queries against different data sources. It has become a versatile tool used by developers working with .NET-based languages such as C# and VB.NET. Use LINQPad to query SQL Server, SQLite, Oracle, MySQL or PostgreSQL — without installing any client software! LINQPad is also a great way to learn C#. It comes with all 1300 examples from the book, C# 12 in a Nutshell, as well as interactive samples from Jon Skeet's C# in Depth.

5. ReSharper:

ReSharper makes Visual Studio a much better IDE! ReSharper extends Visual Studio with over 2200 on-the-fly code inspections for C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET, and other technologies. For most inspections, ReSharper provides quick-fixes (light bulbs) to improve the code. ReSharper helps instantly get to any code in a solution, no matter how large the solution is.

6.Chocolatey:

To develop the application with .NET, developers need to work with many programs and software packages. Managing different programs and packages for .NET application manually is a very time-consuming and headache. Therefore, developers choose a software management automation tool like Chocolatey to speed up the process.Chocolatey makes installing, uninstalling, and updating programs and packages a piece of cake. It reduces the burden of manually installing, configuring and finding compatible programs or packages for your .NET application on Windows systems.

7. NDepend:

NDepend is another very useful .NET tool for .NET developers. NDepend is a powerful static code analyzer and .NET tools to help developers to review and manage code. It can analyze code for .NET, .NET Core, .NET Framework, ASP .NET Core, Xamarin, UWP, and Blazor applications. It helps you to visualize code with logical pictures and graphics and this is a fast-performing tool.

8. NCrunch:

NCrunch increases the productivity of development teams by automatically running tests in the background. It is an automated testing tool for Microsoft Visual Studio. It has an automated test runner, and gives information about the tested code, such as code coverage and performance metrics.

9. dotMemory and dotTrace:

dotMemory allow you to analyze memory usage in a variety of .NET applications: desktop applications, Windows services, ASP.NET web applications, IIS, IIS Express, arbitrary .NET processes, and more. dotTrace is a performance profiler for .NET applications that works right in Visual Studio / JetBrains Rider and provides great ways to detect and analyze performance bottlenecks.

10.Net Reflector:

.NET Reflector is a class browser, decompiler and static analyzer for software created with .NET Framework. Reflector allows decompilation of CLI assemblies into C#, Visual Basic . NET, C++/CLI and Common Intermediate Language and F# (alpha version). Reflector also includes a "Call Tree" that can be used to drill down into intermediate language methods to see what other methods they call.The advantage of using the .NET Reflector tool to troubleshoot and debug your program. It can even enter Visual Studio-written code from third parties. The .NET Reflector could make things easier.

11.Jet Brains:

JetBrains Rider provides the power to productively develop a wide range of applications, including .NET desktop applications, services and libraries, Unity and Unreal Engine games, Xamarin apps, ASP.NET, and ASP.NET Core web applications, and more.