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 GBIC >> Developer Tools >> System Monitoring
Developer Tools - System Monitoring
In addition to your programming language, what do you need to be a successful programmer? One part of the answer is the right set of tools, including many not provided as a part of the language distribution. The old saying "It's a poor carpenter who blames his tools!" may be true, but having good tools definitely gives a good programmer a head start.

System Monitoring
If there was ever a pot of gold for programmers, then the free tools created by SysInternals are it. Now owned by Microsoft, SysInternals has dozens of tools to help a programmer understand exactly what is going on in their PC - to understand what their application is doing, how it impacts the user's PC, and to pinpoint areas of trouble. None of these capabilities are provided by most IDEs, programmers editors or text editors used to edit source code.

Here's my suggestion on the most generally useful tools offered by SysInternals. However, I strongly advise that you look over the entire offering. Some of the tools are very narrow in scope, but still very useful if you're programming in the area where the tool provides capabilities.

  • Process Explorer
    Monitors files system, registry, process, threads and DLL activity

  • DiskMon
    Monitors all hard disk activity

Check out my software reviews section for a more complete listing/recommendation of programming tools.