What Software does every IBM i Software Developer need?
Last week I was asked to help the Network Team to create a pc-image for a new windows rollout to refresh the software builds for the IBM i Developers and other IT Techies. It’s an exciting time at my client’s site… with the haggle looking flustered and excited all at the same time.
NOTE: HAGGLE is the collective term for a group of aging RPG programmers.
So, while everyone is frantically backing up their old XP machines, before getting the new image pushed down here, is a quick list of the software that’s being added as part of the base machine – Windows 7 Enterprise [64Bit] and these are the goodies that I like to use when I’m wearing my ‘IBM i Developer Hat’:
IBM i Access for Windows
Client Access IBM i Access delivers the strengths and capabilities of IBM i to the desktop through easy-to-use screens and wizards. Since IBM i Access delivers new releases simultaneously with IBM i, desktop users can start using the new capabilities immediately. Loading it direct from the IBM i Server’s IFS share means that the latest version is always easily accessible:
\\your-ibm-i-server-name\QIBM\ProdData\Access\Windows
Then decide if you want to install the 32 or 64 bit version… simple!
Downloads
Service Packs – The latest fixes for the IBM i Access for Windows product. Programmers Toolkit – Sample applications and tools that may be useful when developing applications using IBM i Access for Windows functions. This is for IBM i Access for Windows, is only available in English, and is provided as is.
Rational Developer for i – V9.0
Create, maintain and modernize applications on IBM i. IBM Rational Development Studio for i provides RPG, COBOL, C, and C++ compilers for creating IBM i applications. Rational Development Studio for i provides enhancements to the IBM i host Integrated Language Environment (ILE) compilers for creating and maintaining IBM i applications.
RDi 9 is the latest and greatest RPG/CL/DDS/SQL editing tool for IBM i Developers.
Turnover V100 Client (add on for RDi)
The Turnover V100 plugin for RD i enables access to full software change management for Turnover projects, worklists, promotions, and much more. I’ve written lots of very boring blogs about Turnover so can’t be arsed to add any further blurb here. If you don’t know what it is then you probably don’t need it 🙂
NOTE If you prefer to use the old free version of pre-RDi then you can grab WDSC7, the final free release (google it). It’s a few years old but still very similar but be aware it will not support the any of the newer RPG/CL code words or %BIF’s released since the branch to Rational Developer.
Git Hub
Github lets us easily share out code from the cloud. Git Hub for windows makes life simpler. Git is a new direction for me, but the focus of storing things on the cloud is the future. Embrace it my aging gray haired programming friends…
Notepad++
Simply the best text editor. Don’t let their vintage text-only look scare you – this is a state-of-the-art editor. Look at the feature sets and you will soon realise that Editpad__ blows most other editors out of the water. Since moving to Notepad++ a few years ago its on my #1 list of essential ‘making windows life easier’ list 🙂
Gimp
Graphics editing made easy. simple, free and uber-powerful. All wrapped up in an adobe Photoshop style interface. I don’t do much graphics editing but when I do, its Dos Equis. No… wait… thats the wrong commercial.
Skype
Voice over IP, video conferencing, desktop sharing… need I say more? We all know skype and despite my personal mourning for other earlier VOIP app that I’ve played with it seems that skype is here to stay. The insta-chat features make office life and tele-comuting that much easier.
Browsers – everyone needs choices right?
As a web designer and Drupal hacker – I like to check all my work in various browsers and formats ranging from big screen to small screen to tablet and phone. Everyone has a favorite beer – so everyone should have their own personal favorite browser (as long as its not IE or Safari because they both smell like old sports socks)
Chrome
My personal browser of choice.
https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/
Firefox
We all know this one right?
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
Safari
Lots of people out there are stuck with this browser. So its worth having to play with.
http://support.apple.com/downloads/#safari
Filezilla
FTP management at its best. I’ve used Filezilla for yonks and it comes in both client and server flavors and simply works flawlessly. I cant say enough good things about Filezilla.
Image resizer
Is a utility that lets you resize one or more selected image files directly from Windows Explorer by right-clicking. Microsoft should have integrated these feature into Win7/8 as standard.
http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/
Greenshot
Greenshot is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows with the following key features:
Quickly create screenshots of a selected region, window or fullscreen; you can even capture complete (scrolling) web pages from Internet Explorer.Easily annotate, highlight or obfuscate parts of the screenshot.Export the screenshot in various ways: save to file, send to printer, copy to clipboard, attach to e-mail, send Office programs or upload to photo sites like Flickr or Picasa, and others.
VLC Media Player
A media player that just plays everything. every format. every time. Why waste time downloading codecs when you can just use VLC and play everything. keeping life simple with VLC.
Free download manager
It is a powerful, easy-to-use and absolutely free download accelerator and manager. Moreover, FDM is 100% safe, open-source software distributed under GPL license. FDM accelerates downloads by splitting files into sections and then downloading them simultaneously. As a result download speed increases up to 600%, or even more! FDM can also resume broken downloads so you needn`t start downloading from the beginning after casual interruption.
http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/
Juice
I like to listen to music or podcasts when programming. If you want to listen to podcasts, this program is for you. Juice is the premier podcast receiver, allowing users to capture and listen to podcasts anytime, anywhere.
http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/
Bluefish HTML Editor
Bluefish is a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and webdevelopers, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code.
Python
Its not a snake. Python is a programming language that lets you work more quickly and integrate your systems more effectively. You can learn to use Python and see almost immediate gains in productivity and lower maintenance costs.