If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail -Abraham Maslow

Building quality software relies on a myriad of tools.  One essential pillar of craftsmanship software or otherwise is in the mastery of tools that you work with. Some tools that I think are important for a software craftsman:

The Mind:
The most important and essential tool that you have is your mind.
All software originates as a thought so having a clear thought process is necessary.
Unfortunately we have become accustomed to google, facebook and twitter. Being mindful of what you are trying to achieve is important. There is a quote from the TV show Sherlock that has stuck with me “People fill their heads with all kinds of rubbish. And that makes it hard to get at the stuff that matters. Do you see?” Treat your mind as a garden and only let in thoughts that should be nurtured, getting rid of weeds is essential.

The Operating System
I use xubuntu linux, which to me offers simplicity and power. Using Linux forces me to learn more about the underlying machine itself.
We must remember for all the clouds that are now available, ultimately it is a group of computers connected to a network. Quoting Larry Ellison “Google does not run on water vapor”. The choice of operating system that you go with will have a effect on how much of the underlying system you understand. Macs and Windows will abstract a lot of the underlying machine, which if you are an application developer may not be a bad thing  in terms of productivity gains. However gaining knowledge of underlying processes will be harder.

The Programming language:
There are a plethora of programming languages available and to persist with the thought that all languages are made equal is a fallacy.
Using the right language for the job at hand will go a long way in building successful products. Learning a different language than one which you use on a daily basis will create new ways of thinking. For instance try writing to a file first in Java, then in Python. While I am not getting in the argument of which is better, I do want to emphasize that languages have there own strengths.To deal with data in flat files, you are missing out if you do not use the trinity of awk,sed and grep(sed and grep being command line tools). They will provide in simplicitly for which you would be writing programs of hundreds of lines in a high level language.

The Text Editor
From notepad to vim to sublime text to even a IDE. The text editor is where you translate your thought to code. Structured information that can make computers do what you want it to do. Mastery of the text editor will determine how long it takes you to write code assuming that you can type.

Version Control:
Any Software that is not one time use should be maintained in a version control system. Git is my favorite, however depending on your work environment you could end up using svn or perforce. git has many subtleties that will be apparent with practice, know your git and never worry about losing source code.

The Debugger
While best avoided since you do want your mind to be the compiler, debuggers aid understanding both the program and data flow in complex projects. Mastering the debugger will go a long way in solving bugs in programs that you are unfamiliar with and sometimes in code that is familiar.

Databases
Databases are the foundation of the applications that we build.
We have SQL and not only SQL. For structured data SQL based databases are still golden.
Since real data is not always structured, that has forced the move to NOSQL databases.
Redis is the swiss-knife of data in key-value pairs. Learn about couchbase or mongodb for exposure to document based databases.

This list of tools is in no way comprehensive, Building mastery of tools is a long and arduous process. However taking tiny steps today go a long way and add up in a few years. More often than not the problem you are trying to solve will drive the tools that you will use. So try to solve as many different problems as you can, slowly but surely you will see a expanding toolkit.

The path I have laid for myself is to always be learning and teach what I  learn.  I would love to know your experiences in mastering the tools that you work with and ultimately in mastering your craft.