Starting with Front-End Development and looking for a robust setup?
Install Ubuntu 12.04 and here are some of the tools and tips that could come handy if you are configuring it for the first time. I am not detailing on how to install these tools but rather would suggest on what could be good setup for development..
IDE: This is where you spend most of the time. So choose wisely among Sublime Text2, Vim or Emacs. Vim and Emacs are entirely customizable and comes with loads of plugin that would really improve your efficiency. Sublime text is an awesome code editor and you must try it first as it is highly effective and has a lower learning curve. Also there are loads of good plugins available that makes it a handy tool.
Servers: Install Apache 2, nginx and Node. This would cover most of the modern web server stack. Though node is technically not a server. But I hope you get my point.
Once Node and npm are installed there are some indispensable packages you must use. UglifyJS among others is a pretty handy one. Install Compass and CoffeeScript, also setup up jslint/jshint with your IDE. It will ensure a habit of shipping out quality code.
Browser: Use the latest and nightly builds of Chromium/ Firefox, you should work with latest once so not miss any good feature/ improvements.
- Install the latest production release of Ruby, Python and Java, PHP or whatever is your choice of language.
- Learn Version control such as git and invest some time to learn it. It would save you tonnes of time later.
- Last but not the least use yeoman . It is really gem of a tool, it , it gives a robust set of tools , libraries and a workflow that most of top developers use. Invest sometime in learning and using it and you will be always glad that you did.
Installing each one them on Ubuntu 12.04 is easy and obviously it is free and freakishly stable. Configure once and worry about the important aspects of development.
