Web development software
I’ve always wanted to put together a list of all the software I use on a day-to-day basis at the office. As a web developer it is critical to have efficient software that gets the job done well. I use both a Mac and PC for web development, and find both equally useful to me, but for Part 1, I’m going to keep it limited to PC software. Expect another post from me soon with all of the Mac software I tend to use.
Basic Setup
Get dual monitors. Dual monitors are almost a requirement for web or software development. I can’t imagine working with just one. With Mac OSX this is much less of a necessity with features like Expose, but even then it always helps.
Have a decent computer. At work I use a Core2Duo with 4GB of RAM. It’s always nice when you can have every program you need open at once.
Software
In order of frequency-of-use:
E Text Editor – A Textmate clone for Windows. With bundles, snippets, auto-completion, and syntax highlighting for every language under the sun, this is easily the best piece of software I’ve ever spent any money on. Watch a
screencast if you are interested, it can change the way you think about text editing, as cheesy as it sounds.
Photoshop – A given. Every web designer would be rendered useless without this, unless you master one of the free tools out there like Paint.Net and The GIMP. (I can’t stand them, personally.)
FileZilla – A free FTP client. Has all of the features I need, gets the job done quickly, and doesn’t make a fuss.
XAMPP – I use XAMPP as my Apache/PHP/SQL stack for local development. The one-click installer saves me a ton of time and the control panel it ships with keeps me away from the command line and in Windows, a courtesy I graciously accept.
InstantRails – It’s a little outdated but it’s not too difficult to update it manually. It also beats setting everything up manually. On OSX I take a vastly different approach to ride on edge, but on Windows it’s too much of a hassle so InstantRails it is.
WinSCP – Incredibly useful little utility to transfer files over SFTP or SSH. Free to boot.
Redmine – A web-based project management utility. If you’re too cheap for Basecamp, give this a shot; everyone at the office likes it.
That’s about everything I use on the PC for web development. Stay tuned for the Mac edition shortly :)
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