If you are a programmer or want to be a programmer, beside the programming language skill, there are many useful tools that we should have. Even with the main compiler is enough, but this tools is very helpful, sometimes we cannot do important thing without this tools.

So I recommended to check this free or open source tools and I am sure you’ll like most of them. If you have another useful tools just write comment to this post.

• Notepad++, is a generic source editor and Notepad replacement. The aim of Notepad++ is to offer a slim and efficient binary with a totally customizable GUI. It has many suported programming language and you dan customize your language.

• WinMerge, is an Open Source visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms. WinMerge can compare folders and files and present differences in easy to understand and handle format. WinMerge is highly useful for determining what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions. WinMerge can be used as external differencing/merging tool or as standalone application.

• UPX, is a portable, extendable, high-performance executable packer for several different executable formats. It achieves an excellent compression ratio and offers *very* fast decompression. Your executables suffer no memory overhead or other drawbacks for most of the formats supported, because of in-place decompression.

• NSIS, is a tool that allows programmers to create such installers for Windows. It is released under an open source license and is completely free for any use. NSIS creates installers that are capable of installing, uninstalling, setting system settings, extracting files, etc. Because it’s based on script files, you can fully control every part of your installers. The script language supports variables, functions, string manipulation, just like a normal programming language – but designed for the creation of installers. Even with all these features, NSIS is still the smallest installer system available. With the default options, it has an overhead of only 34 KB

• Inno Setup, Inno Setup is a free installer for Windows programs. First introduced in 1997, Inno Setup today rivals and even surpasses many commercial installers in feature set and stability. It’s easier compare to NSIS.

• PEiD, PE iDentifier can detects most common packers, cryptors and compilers for PE files. It can currently detect more than 600 different signatures in PE files.

• HelpMaker, is an application to create help files without an expensive word-processor, without having the manage multiple files. Writing help files is called help authoring. You can make help files using HelpMaker. HelpMaker makes WinHelp, RTF and HTML-Help files.

• IconFX, IcoFX is a free icon editor. You can easily create, edit, read and save icons with transparency for Windows XP and Vista. You can convert your favorite images into icons, or icons to images. With the help of many tools and more than 40 effects icon creation is made easy. It offers powerful tools like Brighten, Darken, Blur and Sharpen for retouching your icons in minutes. In the integrated workspace you can easily preview, save, change your icons.