Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Scott Hanselman: Developer Productivity Tools Video Part 1

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Scott Hanselman: Developer Productivity Tools Video Part 1

When I was at TechEd I visited the Beantown.net INETA User Group and gave a (fairly ad-hoc) talk on Developer Productivity Tools. Jim Minatel loaned me his microphone and a copy of Camtasia and we recorded the talk. Thanks Jim!

It was a great crowd, a lot of fun. We had a number of "off the cuff" discussions about random stuff so I hope it doesn't take away from the gist of the talk.

The complete presentation was around 1 hour 45 minutes, so for online, Jim has split it into 4 segments. This week's segment is available now and is about 33 minutes long. If you watch it in your browser, I recommend you double click on Windows Media Player to make the video go full screen.

It covers:

00:00 Title
00:15 Scott's introduction
00:40 The first tool: Notepad 2
02:40 Little-known built-in command line tools
09:55 Process Explorer and Slick Run
15:15 ILDASM
16:15 .NET Reflector
24:45 NGEN

The remaining three segments for following weeks will cover roughly:

Week 2: XmlSerializer - 20 minutes
Week 3: Windows PowerShell - 33 minutes
Week 4: Active Words, Code Rush, SOAP Scope, XML doc viewer - 23 minutes

There's also some other good screencasts up at Wrox. The growing list of videos is available at wrox.com. The first few videos in the series are:

Wally McClure: Building Real World Apps with Atlas — presented at Atlanta Code Camp, May 2006
Jean-Luc David: Extending Visual Studio 2005 Team System — presented at Atlanta Code Camp, May 2006
Jim Wooley: VB 9.0/C# 3 and the Search for the Missing LINQ — presented at Atlanta Code Camp, May 2006

I hope you enjoy them.

Tracked by:
"Interesting Finds: July 11, 2006" (Jason Haley) [Trackback]
"Interesting Finds: July 11, 2006" (Jason Haley) [Trackback]
"Developer Productivity Tools Video Part 1" (DotNetKicks.com) [Trackback]
"Developer Productivity Tools " (VB-tech weblog) [Trackback]
"Customize your command prompt!" (David Mohundro) [Trackback]
"Developer Productivity Videos" (KoComm Blogs) [Trackback]
"Articles + Posts to Check Out" (Noah Coad's Code) [Trackback]

Tuesday, July 11, 2006 9:34:18 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Scott,

Great video... really enjoyed watching it. But I was almost shocked to see your desktop after the comments about saving time by not typing "otepad2"... so many icons! Check out my article on reducing some of that clutter: http://www.avesh.com/blog/DesktopZenReducingVisualClutterOnYourDesktop.aspx

Looking forward to the other videos.

-AJ

Tuesday, July 11, 2006 9:57:34 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

AJ,

Glad you liked it. As for my desktop, soon I'll post the anti-post to your very good post. I'll explain my perspective on visual clutter and how it relates directly to productivity. :)

Scott Hanselman

Wednesday, July 12, 2006 4:00:57 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Does visual clutter and productivity carry over to the real world desktop? :)

As for desktops, I keep mine completely clear. Removing every icon. From Internet Explorer, My Computer, Recycle Bin, etc. Same goes for my real desk, it's uncluttered. Just habit.

But as for the virtual desktop, I'm a keyboard junkie. I don't need icons on the desktop to start stuff. I use a combination of Total Commander, Google Desktop (using the Applicatin launcher feature) and WinKey to start things. And lately I've added UltraMon and its hotkeys options to move around this new world (at least to me) of dual monitors.

But hey, we're all different. ;)

Diego Barros

Wednesday, July 12, 2006 5:27:37 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

AJ: Scott covers that very topic of the # of icons in his desktop in a later section of the video. It may be section 2 but I can't swear to that. I've watched them all so many times this last week while producing them I forget what's in each. :) Jim

Jim Minatel

Wednesday, July 12, 2006 8:21:33 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Scott,

Thanks for all your work on this blog. I really enjoy reading it and learning new tips, tricks and perspective on technologies...

I think I caught you misusing a utility you shared...

In the first segment of that video, you showed how to use "pushd" and "popd". However, I don't think you are FULLY utilizing it's productivity. You suggested that you use "pushd ." to save the current directory to the stack, then change to a new directory, and use "popd" to get back. However, it can be used EVEN BETTER than that! pushd always pushes the current directory. So, instead, use it like this "pushd \directory\i\want". that will push the current folder to the stack and change to the "directory\i\want". then use popd to get back...

-Kelly

Kelly

Wednesday, July 12, 2006 8:36:05 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Scott, thanks for the plugs on the other videos. It was fun putting them together.

Jim Wooley

Friday, July 14, 2006 9:27:52 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Another interesting (to me, anyway) feature of pushd is that it will display the list of directories on the stack when called with no args:

[Fri 07/14/2006 10:55:07.62]
C:\temp\ThatDemo
$ pushd z:

[Fri 07/14/2006 11:24:40.82]
Z:\home\runtime\is
+$ pushd c:\temp

[Fri 07/14/2006 11:24:44.94]
C:\temp
++$ pushd x:

[Fri 07/14/2006 11:24:52.67]
X:\
+++$ pushd
C:\temp
Z:\home\runtime\is
C:\temp\ThatDemo

it comes in handy when you can't remember how many popd's it will take to get back to where you want to go.