Java/J2EE
The world of Java tools, and especially those that run in the J2EE environment, have really grown up in the past year. Most noteworthy is that with IntelliJ there is finally an IDE worth using.

• IDE - After years of no IDE worth using (IMHO JBuilder is not a help and VisualAge is horrible) there is now, not a good, but a great IDE - IntelliJ. Run (don't walk) and get it today. My only major complaints are that their undo is not a true undo and they don't follow the Windows UI interface rules in places. Here are the issues I see with IntelliJ
• Profiling - JProbe is a really good tool. And it understands that Java profiling in many cases is not a code execution speed issue but a system issue with database calls, and interprocess communication being the bottleneck in many cases.
• Documentation - SUN does a good job with all the javadocs, tutorials, bug lists, etc. But sometimes it can be real difficult finding the information you need. They aren't at the level of the MSDN.
• JRun - A really good reasonably priced app server. My preferred environment is JRun and SQL Server on Windows 2000 because it's so easy to install and administer.
• WebLogic - The interface could be better, and the price could be a lot lower. But it provides a real solid app server.
• Tomcat & JBoss - A really good servlet/JSP/EJB server setup and the price is nice. The downside is that the user interface is lousy (especially JBoss) and there is no paid support. The user community is pretty good for Tomcat. JBoss is difficult.
• Log4J - A great logging system - and it's free.
• JUnit - A great unit testing system - and it's free. It is also perfectly designed and extreemly well documented. The people who did this are incredible.
• Ant - The open source make system that everyone's using. Personally I think it has about as many problems as other systems and is less well documented. But it's what the open source community has jumped on so you better learn it. (By the way - not every problem requires XML as part of it's solution.)
• XSLT - An awesome tool for displaying XML on the screen. Personally I think the language was very badly designed (I am guessing that the people who created it used perl in the past and how no significant experience with well-formed languages). But like Ant, it's here to stay and is better than not using it - much better.

C++/Windows
If you are a Windows/C++ developer, there are a couple of programs that are worth their weight in gold. And as a matter of fact, presently living in the Java/J2EE world - I feel the lack of an equivilent every day.

• Visual C++ - It has become the best development environment ever - anywhere. Living without a debugger like that in VC++ in other environments is horrible.
• MSDN - The MSDN disks have become so part of the development life it's hard to remember that there didn't used to be any such thing. The library alone is invaluable. I don't see how any Windows developer could create anything without this.
• Codewright - You live in your text editor. Codewright is so far beyond anything else, including the editor in VC++ that using something else slows you down every minute you are typing. And it's true undo is very addictive. Fortunately I can still use this when doing Java development.
• BoundsChecker - Very simply, not using this is professional malpractice. And I don't care how "good" a programmer someone is, if they are truly good they know they are not perfect and use this. And it so nicely just lists out bugs, where they are and what's wrong.
• V-Tune - Absolutely incredible for fine tuneing the performance of your code.
• RoboHelp - The fastest way around to create help files.

General Tools

• Norton - Both the Norton Utilities and Anti-virus are absolutely essential for any development system.
• HomeSite - How else are you going to do HTML pages - FrontPage?
• PaintShop Pro - A really good tool for simple graphics work. And you always end up needing to do simple graphics conversion or touch-up.
• InstallMaster - The easiest way to create Windows based setup programs. I really like the feature where you can have all files stores in the setup.exe file - compressed. So the user downloads a single file and there is no need to zip it.
• I-Mail - A really nice mail server that I run on my system. They do a very good job of providing all the features you need while keeping it simple & easy to configure. And their web access is wonderful!