Jelle Druyts

Why:

• Because you will need to use it.
• Because it allows you to search and look at assemblies, classes, methods, fields, inheritance relationships, call stacks, references, resources, ... (let's summarize that as everything).
• Because you can decompile methods to any supported language (IL, C#, VB.NET, ...).
• Because it works with any .NET runtime.
• Because it's cool

Download:

• Download the latest version of Lutz Roeder's Reflector.
• Download the latest version of the Reflector add-ins.
• Download the FileDisassembler add-in.
• Download the Graph add-in.
• Test: see if the files are actually on your hard drive.
• Congratulations, you know how to work the web.

Install Reflector:

• Unzip Reflector into some random directory on your hard drive (no further installation necessary).
• Unzip all add-ins to the Reflector directory, open Reflector and add them all (View - Add-Ins - Add).
• Test: select mscorlib and choose Tools - File Disassembler, click Generate and run through the generated source code to verify that there are no bugs in the .NET Framework (warning: this might be illegal )
• Congratulations, you're now ready for some serious .NET development.

Install the Visual Studio .NET add-in:

• Run Reflector.VisualStudio.exe to install the Visual Studio .NET add-in.
• Open Visual Studio .NET and enable the Reflector add-in (Tools - Add-in Manager - Check the tool and startup boxes).
• Test: right click a project and choose Reflect, it should show you a dockable Reflector window.
• Congratulations, you're now in lazy mode so you never have to leave Visual Studio .NET anymore.

Enjoy:

• You now have direct access to one of the most useful .NET utilities ever.
• (It does eat up quite some memory though - 40 MB minimum on my machine, with all add-ins loaded - but it's worth it.)