Software tools

Software and software tools are air and water for me. I can’t live my life without them. I use software on weekdays and weekends. I can’t imagine what will happen to me if I will have to survive without computers for 3 days or more. I have been using computers more than 10 year. I never write software or software tools. But I am a good consumer of them.
I have been there since 2 B.D. (before DOS). Over the period of time tools have greatly and drastically evolved with their operating systems (referred as OS henceforth). From the day one, UNIX, Linux (and their different flavors) got labeled as for geeks. Microsoft came to the rescue of an average computer user and started selling Windows. This does not mean Windows does not provide first-class exquisite software tools. But ease of use was deliberately exercised within development of Windows and now that has become its culture. (Calm down. This is not the place to start fighting Windows vs. Linux war.)
I started my life on computers with Microsoft’s products and developed myself as a good computer user on Windows. Microsoft ships tools with Windows which satisfy bare minimum needs of an average user. Obviously, if you are a power user, you will demand for more. Lot of third party application developers and vendors came to the market with their own tools on Windows OS. Their tools not only meet your needs, but also offer additional rich set of features you ever had dreamed of. Finally, Microsoft is the master amongst all. They have developed their products heavily usable (and learnable if not usable). Classic examples are Office, Visual Studio, so on and so forth.
Every OS comes to you with abundance of services. All these services allow you to use the computer hardware and other electronic devices effectively and efficiently. File system, for example, is a service provided by OS. It allows you to store and organize data on wide variety of storage devices. Tools cook these services for you with added spice and cheese and present you a mouth-watering dish.
Tools have done their job. You need to go to the dining table; sniff the dish and taste it with your tongue. What I mean is you need to develop your own understanding about the tools and master them. Try to understand what’s which’s and how’s about the tools. You need to evolve yourself for the OS and have essence of how tools work on them. It obviously needs patience. If you enjoy learning, patience will come for free.
Hold on. You just said, “Why the hell do I need to do all this?” The answer is pretty straight forward. You will be able to configure tools as per your needs. You will be able to automate your activities. You will be able to use different tools in combination with each other to enjoy their combined effectiveness. All this will greatly raise your productivity. They will start calling you a power user. Cool?
I am on the way with you. ;) I am here to share my experience about some of the tools which are available on Windows. Others are available in the form of online services on web. Altap Salamander is my favorite. I love it. I will share my romance with Salamander as much as I can. I will also cover how to use different text editors, command prompt services and combine them with each other. Google is serving world class online services. I will be sharing my experiences on these too. If time permits, I will start sharing about tools which are popular in software programming space.
Your feedback on this will be appreciated. I will try to post my next blog ASAP.
Till then, Alvida!!