If you run a small shop and want a solid development operation, or you run a large shop and would rather spend your money on your people, use these lists as starting points. These tools are free, except where noted, and reasonably priced otherwise. All adhere to open standards for their input and output, which helps protect your coding investment. If you run Linux, you'll find similar tools for that platform and your software costs will drop further. You get a bonus, regardless, because programmers who know how to use these tools are smarter, more affordable, and more creative than their commercially grounded peers.
Development tools are links in a chain.
Text tools pass work to compilers, which pass work to debuggers and your runtime environment. Weak links freeze your operation. The major links in this toolchain are languages and language tools , an Internet runtime to simulate the runtime network, and file-handling tools to pick up, put down, and change the format of data. You can't work without them. They dictate the display of content in a browser.