Top 5 Developer Productivity Tools

I've been a software developer for over 4 years now, and have found these 5 tools to be indispensable in my daily development role.

5. Notepad++ - http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
A much more powerful, yet easy to use and low overhead text editor that will give you syntax highlighting for most languages, formatting for xml, html, and a bunch of plugins.  I see this program on more and more blogs about tools developers shouldn't live without.  This is one of the first programs I install on a new computer!

4. Fiddler - http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/
A very easy to use http analytic tool.  I can look at, and create http requests using any HTTP verb you can imagine.  It's easy to save requests that you've created making it an invaluable end to end testing tool.

3. WinSCP - http://winscp.net/eng/index.php
Need I say more?  An excellent FTP/SFTP and more tool that seamlessly can turn into a putty session allowing you to have a ssh session with the server. Simple, clean, quick.

2. Ditto - http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/index.php
I'm continually surprised that every developer (or even person who works on a computer for any amount every day) doesn't already have their own clip-board manager.  I use ditto because it's simple, yet keeps my clips organized.  It get's out of the way when I don't want to see it, and it can pop back up in an instant when I do.  Searching old clips have saved me many times when a reference to "something" would have been lost.  I can't stress enough how much of a productivity increase you get with a clip board manager.

1. Launchy - http://www.launchy.net/
Even more than a clipboard manager, no-one should have to browse every program installed on their computer in order to open one of them ever again.  Launchy is an incredibly easy to configure/install application that does precisely what it sounds like....Launches applications, urls, or whatever command you tell it to.  The plugins that come standard allow you to create any command you would run on a command line.  A lot of launcher applications require manual configuration for every program you want to run, but Launchy automatically indexes your programs and adds them to a list.  It's intelligent so programs you use more often will appear towards the top.  With a quick keystroke I can launch any program on my computer.

Oracle String Literal Too Long Solution

I recently ran into a problem when trying to insert more than 4000 characters into a CLOB field (Character Large Object) in an Oracle database. The issue previously was my system was building the SQL from scratch... concatenating strings and such. The solution was to use "Bind Variables" and Java Prepared Statements, instead of the Statement object.

This was done using Java 5. You'll also need the latest (compatible version with your DB) copy of the oracle JDBC driver. The download page is here: Oracle JDBC Driver

This code when used with MSSQL and DB2 databases still worked the same.


String connectionUrl = "jdbc:oracle:thin:.....etc....etc....";
String user = "user";
String pass = "password";
String sql = "INSERT INTO SCHEMA.TABLENAME (UUID,TEST_FIELD_NAME) VALUES (?,?)";

Connection connection = null;
try
{
Class.forName("oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver").newInstance();

connection = DriverManager.getConnection(connectionUrl, user, pass);
PreparedStatement pstate = connection.prepareStatement(sql);

String testVar = "test root id";

pstate.setString(1, "testmatt12345");
pstate.setString(2, testVar);

boolean success = pstate.execute();

}catch(SQLException e)
{
[handle exception]
} catch (IllegalAccessException e) {
[handle exception]
} catch (InstantiationException e) {
[handle exception]
} catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
[handle exception]
}finally
{
try {
connection.close();
} catch (SQLException e) {
[handle exception]
}
}

The power of RSS

Lately I've really been getting into using Google Reader to read feeds from everywhere.  It turns out that it has been very beneficial to me and others as well.  It is so much easier to keep track of news, current technology news, well...just about anything that I have been able to learn much I probably would have missed.  I've also made it a point to share anything I find extremely useful. If you want to track the things I find useful, you can see them here.  I believe you can even subscribe my shared items!