Over the years I've used many operating systems (Unix,
VMS, DOS, Macintosh), but I've done most
of my independent work-for-hire on Windows (the
NT-derived versions). I also run my own mail and web
server on Mac OS X (used to be Linux).
For programming languages I'm not religious, other than believing
in using the appropriate one for the job. I'm conversant in all of
(by alpha) AWK, Basic, C/C++, FoxPro, Java, JavaScript, Lisp, Pascal,
Perl and probably other things I've forgotten I knew. And
years ago I even wrote in
TUTOR on the PLATO system.
Languages and tools I've used and can recommend highly, in no
useful order:
- Perl, of course. Say "Hello,
world!", Perl: Hello, world! Local time is Sat Jul 19 15:17:04 2008 (brought to you by
HTML::Mason).
If you're on Windows or Linux and can't build Perl yourself from source
check out
ActiveState. They've got
binaries for Windows and Linux.
- FreeBSD, my server OS.
- Apple Mac OS X, my earlier server OS (really!), and still a test system for cross-platformedness.
- Apache web server
- mod_perl, obligatory Apache/Perl
integration.
- ActiveState's
ActivePerl Pro Studio which includes the Perl
Development Kit (for debugging and building Win32 exes from Perl scripts) and Komodo editor (good at multiple languages and another debugger alternative).
- Sysinternals' psTools and Process Explorer (plus many other tools).
- JP Software's 4DOS/NT command line utility for Windows.
- XEmacs,
which is my main editor for most things textual.
- GNU Emacs,
which was my main editor for a number of years. I used the
Win32
version and Linux versions. (And I still use it in OS X and BSD consoles.)
- Macromedia Studio 8 (Dreamweaver et al).
- JASC Paint Shop Pro. I did finally shell out for Photoshop, but PSP is great for quick adjustments and conversions.
- WinMerge, an open source graphical diff and merge tool for Win32.
- WinZip
- Lugaru Epsilon Programmer's Editor,a nice, powerful, commercial, emacs-like editor that I used for years
on DOS and Windows
until GNU Emacs for Win32 stabilized, although since then I've switch to XEmacs.
- Nvu, a Mozilla-based HTML editor, useful for note-taking.
