Top 10 Essential Dot Net Development Tools
With the advent of the first beta version of the .NET framework released in the late 2000s and its growth into an advanced platform for developing AR and gaming apps, the popularity of .NET has grown significantly throughout the years.
.NET is the free, open-source, cross-platform framework to build modern apps and powerful cloud services. Though the world of technology is constantly evolving, the need to keep everything in order is still important. The .NET framework has become an important tool for businesses to have a strong online presence, and it facilitates advanced software development services efficiently and provide a robust user experience. Of course, selecting the right platform is essential to making your website a success.
As a popular development framework, .NET brings significant benefits to its developers and users. Let’s check out why .NET is in great demand in 2024.
Why .NET is the Most Preferred Framework?
.NET framework provides more flexible and versatile development solutions that function predominantly on Windows. Developed and designed by Microsoft, .NET offers an easy and consistent programming environment for programmers. This framework is made up of a wide variety of tools, programming languages, compilers, and code libraries to create different websites, applications, and services on Windows. Here are the reasons why .NET is the most preferred framework among developers:
1# Improved Performance: .NET developers produce high-quality websites, applications, and software products. They offer a superior, dynamic user experience, ensuring high-speed development and improved performance.
2# High Quality: These developers create the best quality products with fewer mistakes and debugging. The reliable and user-friendly tools guide them to focus on developing phenomenal applications with absolute safety and security.
3# Multiple Platforms Support: A cross-platform framework used by .NET is compatible with all platforms, including Android, Linux, and Mac. This saves the developers from rewriting the code every time they are developing apps for Android and iOS platforms.
4# Multi-Language Support: To develop user-oriented applications, this software uses a wide range of programming languages, including different versions of C#, F#, and all the versions of Visual Studio. This way, the developers can create many applications, including business websites and applications, data management tools, gaming applications, etc.
Top 10 Essential Dot Net Development Tools
As a scalable and reliable tool for developing a variety of web and desktop applications, .NET has become an immensely popular framework in the developer community. Thus, we have compiled a list of the top 10 tools that are widely used in the industry by every custom software development company for the efficient development of .NET solutions.
1# Visual Studio/Visual Studio Code
Code editors play a significant role in developing diverse software programs and solutions. Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code are both highly appreciated by the developers and come with built-in compilers, features, and capabilities that allow the developers to write, edit, debug, and ship the code. The functionality of both code editors can be extended by integrating a number of extensions, making them the top-rated .NET tools for development.
2# NuGet
NuGet comes with the .nupkg extension as a single ZIP file. It involves compiled codes and a descriptive display comprising information like the version number of the package. NuGet is a package manager from Microsoft that adds the necessary code to a project and allows the developers to add and manage packages on Windows, Linux, and macOS platforms quite easily for .NET development.
3# LINQPad
LINQPad is a secure platform that queries databases using a modern programming language called LINQ. It also provides an opportunity to try out the code lines with testing programs or snippets. LINQPad is a useful tool for developers to learn LINQ (Language-Integrated Query) expressions in C# and other .NET languages.
4# NCrunch
As a fully automated testing tool for Microsoft’s Visual Studio, NCrunch is available to use as an extension. It automatically runs the tests in the background, provides coverage metrics and code performance, furnishes knowledge and information about the tested code in real-time, and supports the coding and testing effort. It is a reliable dot-net development tool that parallelly runs the tests on your project while you are coding, without needing any specific commands.
5# ReSharper
As a Visual Studio extension, ReSharper is a great tool for developers as it comprises many code editing helpers for transforming and rearranging the code and speeding up the project delivery. It facilitates incomparable assistance for creating codes in all technological languages: XAML, XML, HTML, C#, C++, CSS, TypeScript, ASP.NET, JavaScript, JSON, MVC, NAnt, Protobuf, MSBuild scripts, and extensive cross-language capability.
6# NDepend
NDepend is another useful .NET development tool that acts as a static code analyzer and is easily integrated with Visual Studio. The tool offers various metrics for measuring code quality and visualizing its design. It also provides a 10,000-foot view of the application and code organization. It analyzes code for .NET, .NET Core, .NET Framework, ASP.NET Core, UWP, Xamarin, and Blazor applications.
7#Chocolatey
Chocolatey is a free package manager for Windows, and it is empowered by PowerShell and NuGet technology. This tool makes installing, uninstalling, and updating programs and packages easier and allows you to manage your software in the cloud, on-premises systems, and even in Docker containers using a single command.
8# Postman
As an open-source collaborative platform for API development, Postman provides .NET developers with an extensive collaborative testing setup for APIs and the finest testing environment for HTTP requests to any API, whether local or distant. Postman is a very versatile tool that is easy-to-use for all basic or advanced tasks. This tool comes in four versions, namely the Free, Team, Business, and Enterprise editions.
9# Stackify Prefix
Stackify presents Prefix as a code profiler tool that runs on a server once after the execution of an app by a .NET programmer. The prefix facilitates the developers who are working with the .NET language on Windows, Linux, and macOS regularly. It is an exceptional tool that helps experienced developers ensure optimal application performance. This Microsoft web developer tool captures all the requests and offers a detailed report of all the events.
10# NUnit
NUnit offers an easy way to perform unit testing, and it supports a wide range of .NET platforms. It is an easy-to-use, feature-rich, open-source tool that is used for generating and running automated tests implementing various programming languages. It is a straightforward framework that comes with diverse user-friendly attributes.
How do these .NET Tools Benefit You?
There are a few majorly considerable reasons that point towards how these .NET tools benefit you:
-> .NET tools come with Objective-Oriented Programming (OOP) that organizes your code for maximum reusability.
-> Automatic monitoring in .NET prompts alerts in advance when important issues arise.
-> .NET development tools facilitate the development of cross-platform applications on multiple operating systems, like Windows, macOS, Linux, Mobile, IoT, Cloud platforms, containers, etc.
-> .NET provides easy-to-deploy, maintain and other software development services for the applications developed.
Conclusion
The ecosystem of .NET programming and development comprises a wide range of tools and technologies. These tools and technologies contribute to the implementation of an efficient software development lifecycle. This list may definitely help you find the best tool to develop quality solutions for your project-specific requirements. Just make a clear outline of what your project needs are, understand the preferences in development, and choose the tool that meets your needs the most and is user-oriented.
If you are still unsure of making a perfect decision in this regard and need some guidance on this subject, you can still reach out to ManekSoft. The expertise of this elite-class custom software development company in delivering top-tier .NET development services is admired worldwide and helps businesses make a smart move towards achieving their organizational goals.