Natural Born Coder

Applications

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by

doozer
in

It occurred to me that I use a lot of different applications but I keep a mental note of them rather than writing them down. I thought it was about time I stopped relying on my memory and started keeping a list as I’m sure I’ve started forgetting some great tools that I use. Listing all the applications I use would actually be quite a daunting task but fortunately there’s a quick way to get an initial list.

Generating a List of Installed Applications

There’s a couple of ways to generate a list of all the applications on your system. The best that I’ve found this:

  • Open an administrator powershell prompt
  • Enter the command: Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher, InstallDate | Format-Table –AutoSize > C:\AllApplications.txt
  • Wait a few seconds while the file is generated.

You can also generate a list from a regular command prompt as shown below but for some reason this seemed to miss out a load of applications.

  • Open an administrator level command prompt
  • Enter: wmic
  • At the new command prompt enter:  /output:C:\AllApplications.txt product get name,version
  • Wait anything between a few seconds and a few minutes for a list of all applications to be generated.

In either case the list can be processed in Excel as it is a fixed width output. There’s a lot of stuff in the list that you probably don’t want but it’s quicker than trying to capture all the information by hand.

Notes

Where an application installs many separate small applications that are generally installed together I’ve just listed the parent application (SQL Server does this for example). I’ve removed anything to do with Windows and most things from Microsoft as they seem to have no trouble getting themselves installed!

Installed Applications

Generally speaking the higher something is up the list in any given section the more important it is. If it’s at the bottom of a list it’s close to being replaced.

Software Development

Development Environments

  • IntelliJ IDEA – Java development mostly
  • WebStorm – Angular development mostly
  • Notepad++ – fantastic text editor
  • Arduino – Required for pretty much any development on Arduino
  • PyCharm – For learning Python one day
  • CLion – Rarely used, attempt at learning C for arduino development.
  • Android Studio – Probably not needed any more
  • Netbeans – mostly replaced with IntelliJ

Databases

Other Tools

  • Git – source code control
  • Apache Tomcat – still required for a couple of applications but generally now I just use an embedded Tomcat with SpringBoot
  • Java JDK – Oracle JDK is no longer free, Adopt is the best alternative.
  • Artifactory – Maven artefact store. Community edition. Java based, installs fine under Windows and Linux. Super easy to install and set up.
  • SonarQube – Code quality management, not essential but nice to have. Picky about Java version, and database (MySQL is no longer supported). Probably wouldn’t bother installing as Coverage in IntelliJ gives roughly the same information for a one-man band like me.
  • Jenkins – Continuous integration, not essential but nice to have. Windows installer available, also installs fine under Linux.
  • Python 3.7
  • Node – Required for Angular development
  • Postman – used to interact with REST frameworks
  • Subversion – still used but things are being moved to Git / GitHub
  • Mantis – bug tracker, was used extensively but mostly replaced with GitHub now.

Computer Management

  • KeePass – password management
  • Winbox – for managing MikroTik devices
  • AnyDesk – remote desktop view
  • VirtualBox – easy virtual machines under Windows
  • Veeam Agent for Windows – backup client for Windows servers
  • WizTree – a replacement for WinDirStat.
  • WinDirStat – great utility for finding out what is taking up all the space on your drive
  • Areca – Backup software, not very good but it has an easy to understand file structure.
  • VMware vSphere Client 5.0 – only required for the very old VMWare instance that is probably retired.

Music / Sound

  • MusicBee – great music player
  • Amazon Music – free with a Prime subscription but a bit rubbish.

Images / Photos

  • Paint.Net – simple but powerful free image editing
  • digiKam – photo management, KDE based but seems to run fine on windows.
  • Greenshot – the best print screen utility going
  • ExifPro – Photo viewer, good with EXIF data
  • Canon MP Navigator EX 2.1 – Software for the scanner
  • Inkscape – vector drawing, especially SVG
  • diagrams.net – a great tool for drawing diagrams (formerly draw.io). There’s a desktop version and a browser version. It appears to be properly open source and appears to have Debian packages.

Video Editing

  • Movie Studio Platinum – video editing
  • DaVinci Resolve – I will likely be switching to the free version
  • HandBrake – video transcoding
  • VLC – video player, plays anything
  • MakeMKV – convert DVD / BluRay disks into MKV files. Works with most DVD’s and some BluRays
  • MKVToolNix – tools for working with MKV files
  • CyberLink PowerDVD – software BluRay player. Very expensive but comes free with some hardware.
  • HD Writer AE – original software for working with the video camera, not really needed as Movie Studio does a fine job of grabbing the files.

File Management / Downloading / Network

  • Dropbox – file sharing, rarely used
  • Putty – SSH client for Windows
  • Deluge – BitTorrent client for downloading the latest Linux distribution
  • NordVPN – cheap and reliable VPN for when you need that sort of thing
  • Check Point VPN – not sure the most current version works
  • WinSCP – FTP client amongst other things
  • 7-Zip – useful zip utility with context menu integration
  • Bulk Rename Utility – looks rough but it’s a great piece of software
  • Free Download Manager – not bad for managing multiple downloads
  • tinyMediaManager – great little tool for renaming media files in a standard way so they can be picked up by Plex

CAD / CAM

  • Autodesk Fusion 360 – free and powerful CAD/CAM but only online models
  • SolidWorks – CAD but very expensive
  • SketchUp – free version is great for quick designs, the desktop version has been discontinued but it looks like you can still download it for now.

Books / Reading

  • calibre – the ultimate ebook library application but only works with DRM free books
  • Adobe Acrobat Reader – for PDF
  • Adobe Digital Editions 4.5 – required for some DRM encumbered books, seems to have stopped development at version  4.5
  • Amazon Kindle for Windows – required for books bought through Amazon. Versions up to 1.25 allow you to remove the DRM from books.

Languages

  • Anki – quiz cards for learning languages, not great.

Mathematics

  • RStudio – IDE for working with R
  • R for Windows – R language for Windows
  • Microsoft Mathematics – powerful calculator for Windows, be careful about downloads there seems to be a lot of fakes

Web Browsers

Games / TV / Relaxation

  • Steam
  • Netflix
  • Battle.net
  • Minecraft Launcher
  • GOG Galaxy Launcher
  • Epic Games Launcher
  • Origin Launcher
  • Amazon Games Launcher

Office Applications

  • LibreOffice – open source office suite
  • Microsoft Office 2007 – last version for which I bought a license

Hardware

  • Corsair LINK – fan control
  • Display Pilot – software settings for the monitor
  • Logitech Options
  • Logitech Unifying Software
  • Open Hardware Monitor – hardware monitoring

Miscellaneous