For version control, Git is a very popular alternative to Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC). Git is integrated into many tools (including Visual Studio) and services, such as GitHub or GitLab. Mercurial (Hg) is also an option, although Git has gained the most developer mind share. Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and Team Foundation Server (TFS) both allow you to use either Git (including GitHub and Bitbucket integration) or legacy TFVC.
PostgreSQL is a fantastic open source relational database, and it works with many Object Relational Mappers (O/RMs), including Entity Framework (EF) and NHibernate. Now, it is also available on Azure along with MySQL. Dapper is a great tool that provides a high performance, ...
