Ten indispensable tools for SharePoint 2013 developers

1. CamlDesigner 2013 – provides you with a graphical inferface which allows you to   build CAML queries for single lists as well as queries that can be executed with SPSiteDataQuery. You can also get code snippets for the server-side object model, the .NET client-side object model, the JavaScript client-side object model and REST. This tool has been developed by Karine Bosch and Andy Van Steenbergen – two of the board members of BIWUG (Belgian SharePoint User group) 
   
2. SharePoint Manager 2013 – is a SharePoint object model explorer. It enables you to browse every site on the local farm and view every property.
   
3. ULSViewer  - there are other tools out there – check out SharePoint ULS log viewer tool comparison and verdict
4. SharePoint 2013 Client Browser – requires no installation –simply unzip the exe – allows you to explore the SharePoint object hierarchy.
5. Fiddler – is a web debugging tool which allows you to investigate all HTTP traffic (REST calls and XML or JSON responses). It also has some built in features to profile app performance and spot bottlenecks – also check out Fiddler PowerToy – Part 2 : HTTP performance
6. SharePoint 2013 Search Query Tool v2  - can be used to query, test and debug search queries – for both SharePoint 2013 on-premise and SharePoint online search queries. I also use it for examing and tuning ranking of search results. See understanding item ranking in SharePoint 2013 search for more details
7. SPCop Community Edition – this is a Visual Studio extesion which analyzes your SharePoint code which was created by Matthias Einig and which is based on the SharePoint Code Analysis Framework
8. SPFastDeploy – Visual Studio extension which allows to push individual files for deployment in SharePoint apps without requiring you to do a full re-deploy every time there is a change. It makes developers a lot more productive using the SharePoint 2013 hosted app model. Excellent tool built by Steve Curran.
9. SharePoint Color Palette Tool – the new SharePoint 2013 theme model (also called composable looks) allows you to brand your SharePoint 2013 environment in a new way. One of the key components of a composable look is a .spcolor file which defines the color elements. The color palette tool is  a free utility that enables you to develop spcolor files interactively
10. REST client plugin for Google Chrome – Excellent tool for creating REST requests – some developers might however favour the REST Postman plugin for Google Chrome.

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