I am often asked by my Linux-using friends why I am using Windows, while my my Windows-centric friends wonder why I am using Linux or BSD and my Mac-user friends ask why I’m not using Mac at all. The answer to the last is easiest – I don’t have a Mac.<\/p>\n
As to the other questions, it depends on what I am doing at the moment. I don’t think that Windows is inherently better or worse than Linux or BSD, nor do I think that all software that costs money is evil. I think it all comes down to asking the question: “What is the best tool for the job I am doing?”<\/p>\n
With that in mind, here is the first installment in the list of my picks:<\/p>\n
Web Development (HTML\/PHP\/JavaScript): Adobe HomeSite<\/a><\/strong> (previously Macromedia HomeSite, previously Allaire HomeSite). [Windows]<\/p>\n I have been using HomeSite for several years now, and despite the changes in company ownership, it continues to be the best<\/strong> tool available for general web development.<\/p>\n In the realm of rapid development, HomeSite has a built-in ftp client, and you can also set it to use a server running locally to see PHP<\/a> pages and Perl<\/a> CGI in action. For that I prefer Xampp from ApacheFriends<\/a>, because of its ease of installation on Windows and the fact that it makes creating a local Apache<\/a>\/PHP<\/a>\/MySQL<\/a> setup a snap.<\/p>\n The down side to HomeSite is that it doesn’t understand Python<\/a>\/PSP<\/a>, and changing the tab settings to use spaces instead of tabs seems to be broken in the latest version. I thought it used to do that, but I may be mistaken.<\/p>\n The only tool that comes close is Bluefish<\/a><\/strong> [Linux] which seems to be improving in great strides. When I need to whack out a quick web document while in Linux that is the tool for which I reach.<\/p>\n