development laptop - setup suggestions + training

[AHarvey]

Hi all,

New 480gb SSD for my laptop, 3 uses, general use, infosec training and development training.

My experience is TSQL, ok Python and some basic web stuff but I like to tinker and pop into various different languages/environments depending on what I want to do.

Any software you would suggest? I'm just starting out learning and have no experience of GIT etc.

I'm thinking WAMP, FTP software, ATOM/Notepad++/sublime for basic web stuff.

Python/IDE

Visual Studio IDE or Visual Code

Obviously, I'm not being very specific but is there anything you use that you feel others would benefit from and for what type of development?

Code version control, documenting, testing etc?

EDIT: Windows 10 laptop

 

[shine]

Sublime Text and appropriate plugins will cover most of the above.

I prefer the cli for git but Sublime has good plugins for git.

Is this a Windows/Linux/macOS laptop?

 

[AHarvey]

Sublime Text and appropriate plugins will cover most of the above.

I prefer the cli for git but Sublime has good plugins for git.

Is this a Windows/Linux/macOS laptop?

I know Atom has a massive amount of plugins but I've rarely used sublime so wasn't too sure but heard great things about it.

Windows 10 laptop, should have stated that in the original post

 

[shine]

I prefer macOS but depending not the client I need to work on different OS's, Sublime Text makes this easier as it's cross platform.

Sublime have also released Sublime Merge a Git client, I've not tried it yet but it looks very good.

As for learning git, have a look at the excellent book Pro Git.

 

[bscott]

Rather than using WAMP, I think you would be better off investing some time learning the basics of Docker for a local development environment.

 

[Hades]

I'm a bit addicted to the Jetbrains IDE's at the moment. So a present I bought myself last year was an All Products pack which gives me access to every one of their IDE's (it's an annual subscription but if you cancel then you still keep a license to use the version released when you were - in other words you get it forever).

But they also offer a free IDE for Python called Pycharm Community Edition, which would be worth looking at if you aren't already.

 

[bscott]

+1 for Jetbrains

 

[Cromulent]

Yep. Jetbrains IDEs are pretty good. I'm waiting for the new version of Clion to come out as it supports remote development in C using SSH.

Also agree with the person who said Docker but if you want to use Docker on Windows 10 you need Windows 10 Pro or Windows 10 Enterprise. You can't use Windows 10 Home.

 

[bscott]

You can't use the Hyper-V version of Docker on Windows Home but you can use the Virtual Box version. Also, if you use the Hyper-V version of Docker on Windows you can't run VMware and AFAIK Virtual Box. When I was using Windows 10 Pro I wanted to use VMWare and Docker so I used the VirtualBox version and that was fine. Eventually I just set up a VMWare virtual machine running linux and ran docker there.

 

[Hades]

Yep. Jetbrains IDEs are pretty good. I'm waiting for the new version of Clion to come out as it supports remote development in C using SSH.

Is it in 2018.3? If so then it should be out soon. But if you have a license for CLion then you should be able to download beta versions under their early access programme. However it's probably still worth waiting because if you only want to pay for a year then their fallback license is the version released at the time you started your subscription.

You might also be able to haggle a slight discount. Last year I called them to ask about a black Friday discount. They didn't have a discount last year but they were able to offer me a small discount (about 10% or 15% I think). So it's worth calling them to see if they will.

 

[Cromulent]

Is it in 2018.3? If so then it should be out soon. But if you have a license for CLion then you should be able to download beta versions under their early access programme. However it's probably still worth waiting because if you only want to pay for a year then their fallback license is the version released at the time you started your subscription.

You might also be able to haggle a slight discount. Last year I called them to ask about a black Friday discount. They didn't have a discount last year but they were able to offer me a small discount (about 10% or 15% I think). So it's worth calling them to see if they will.

Yeah, it is in 2018.3. I'm waiting for the official release rather than using the beta versions as I don't want to muck around with major bugs at this stage. I'll just wait until it comes out properly.

Good tip about giving them a call. I might email them a black Friday sale and see what they say. I want a one year all products license anyway.

 

[Hades]

Yeah, it is in 2018.3. I'm waiting for the official release rather than using the beta versions as I don't want to muck around with major bugs at this stage. I'll just wait until it comes out properly.

Good tip about giving them a call. I might email them a black Friday sale and see what they say. I want a one year all products license anyway.

You've probably noticed but 2018.3.1.1 is out now.

 

[Cromulent]

You've probably noticed but 2018.3.1.1 is out now.

Yep. I've updated. I got a little bit distracted so haven't been able to do what I originally wanted to do but I'll get round to it in the end.