I guess that most developer have their favorite set of libraries that they use in just about every project. Atleast I have such a toolbox. They are tools that I find myself using constantly and that I feel help me in my development. Here comes my list.
Well, I'm mostly a web developer so I need a nice web framework to start with. I feel that Asp.Net Mvc is the framework that I can be the most productive and have the most fun with at the moment. When I start a new web project in visual studio it's allways a mvc project.
If you have been reading my blog, you know that I'm a big fan of the OR/M NHibernate. I never build a web application without NHibernate as my data access layer.
Not to much to say here. I want to use a di/ioc container and structuremap is my personal favorite that is available for the .net framework.
A great tool to map entities to viewmodels. It's easy to use and set up, and you will save a lot of left-to-right code by using it.
If you want a nice looking UI at the client, a javascript library will help you a lot. My choise is jQuery. It's simple to use, has great support and there is a ton of great plugins.
We need a testing framework if we should write test. My personal favorite is NUnit. It's simple and it works great.
If we write tests we usually need a mocking framework as well. My choise here is Rhino Mocks. I have been using it for a while and it's working out great for me.
Those are the tools that I use in just about every web application I'm building. In my oppinion they make development a lot smother and more fun.