Useful Software
This is a list of IDEs, extensions, student discounts, and any other software-related stuff that students who do anything CS-related might find useful.
Online Tools/Student Discounts
Cross-Platform Software
Platform Specific Software (Mac)
Platform Specific Software (Windows)
Online Tools/Student Discounts
GitHub Student Developer Pack
First and foremost, GitHub has a student developer package that gives you a ton of benefits not only from GitHub, but also from some big names in the CS industry, like free AWS credits, MongoDB credits, free paid app subscriptions while you are a student, and more! When I applied about a year ago, APU was not on the list of pre-approved univerisities, so it took a week for my verification to go through. It's definitely worth getting, as it's valid for the duration that you are a student. Details and form to submit here.
Cross-Platform Software
JetBrains IDEs
JetBrains is an IDE development company that makes a good deal of IDEs all based off of the same "core" platform. Their most famous IDE is IntelliJ IDEA, which is for Java development. You can also use it for Python development and some other languages. They also have a separate IDE called PyCharm that is specifically for Python development. They make a ton more IDEs as well, including ones for C/C++, PHP, HTML/JavaScript, Ruby, Go, and others, but only IntelliJ IDEA and PyCharm have "community" editions that are free to use. However, if you are currently an undergraduate student, graduate student, or professor, you can get all of their paid IDEs, including the "professional" versions of PyCharm and IntelliJ IDEA, for free! You can renew this annually while you are a student. I personally have stopped using Eclipse, VS Code, and Arduino because IntelliJ and the rest of the JetBrains suite is leaps and bounds better than Ecplise and VS Code. IntelliJ launches and compiles code so much faster than Eclipse does, and it has smart autocompletion, meaning it actually suggests the most likely piece of code using machine learning. It also has an extensive collection of plugins, and the UI is so much cleaner. I would highly recommend the JetBrains suite to anyone.
However, JetBrains does not allow any of their IDEs to be used for commercial development if you have an educational license. This means you can only do "educational activities" or "academic research" with an educational license. Still worth having, but if you want to distribute or sell an app that isn't open-source, you have to buy a standard license to do so.
Before you download, I would recommend downloading JetBrains Toolbox to manage all of your updates. Updating each app individually can be a hassle since there are so many, so Toolbox manages all of your updates in one place. Link to Toolbox here.
You can verify your student eligibilty in a variety of ways, but if you already have the GitHub student developer pack, you can get instant verification and access to the full suite. Link to verify eligiibiliity and download here. If you just want to use the always-free community editions of IntelliJ IDEA and PyCharm, you can download those from the Toolbox app directly once it is installed.
JetBrains Plugins
Since the JetBrain's IDEs are all based off of the same JetBrains "Core", most plugins can be installed in all of their IDEs, although there are some exceptions (mainly language support plugins depending on the IDE's compiler). I have provided links alongside each of these, but I think it's better to go to the built-in plugin manager in each IDE and install from there. Go to Preferences (Mac) or Settings (Windows) > Plugins > Marketplace and search for the name of each one. Super easy and conveinient.
Space
If you plan on contributing to ACM @ APU's GitHub, you will need to download the Space plugin from JetBrains. It allows you to connect to ACM @ APU's Space directly, and you can manage pull requests, git commits, and some other Space features directly from any JetBrains IDE. Link to download here, but installing plugins directly from the plugin manager in each IDE is easier.
Material Theme UI
This plugin is absolutely essential in my opinion. The stock UI look and feel in JetBrains IDEs isn't as bad as it is in Eclipse, but it's definitrely not beautiful. This plugin gives you a dozen or so different UI theme options that look modern and clean, and they completely restyle every component of the UI to match. My favorite is Material Oceanic. Link to download here, but once again, installing from the plugin manager in each IDE is easier.
JetBrains Mono Font
Not really a plugin, but still essential. Material Theme UI will change the default IDE font from JetBrains Mono to Menlo. JetBrains Mono was specifically designed for editing and reading code, and it is easier to read than Menlo in my opinion. To re-enable JetBrains Mono as the IDE font, go to Preferences/Settings>Editor>Font and choose JetBrains Mono. 13 pt font feels a bit big for my 15" laptop, so I would choose 12 pt with 1.2 line spacing. You do not need to set a fallback font as JetBrains Mono supports a wide variety of languages and characters.
Extra Icons
All of the JetBrains IDEs have some IDE-specific config files that live in a folder called .idea at the root of your project directory. Additoinally, each IDE usually creates a .gitignore file that lives in the root folder of your project directory. You might also have Travis or CircleCI config files. All of these will use generic file or folder icons in the project navigator by default, but this plugin adds custom file and folder icons for each of these special files/folders. It supports many more files than I've listed here, so it's definitely worth the download. Link here, but again, just use the plugin manager in each IDE.
Indent Rainbow
Languages that are whitespace-dependent (like Python) or just have a lot of necessary syntax (like Java) can often have lots of nested loops or functions, and making sure that all of your code is indented properly can be a hassle. This plugin shows you the indentation level of every line of code in the file you're working on by assigning each level of indentation a different color. It also highlights any anomalies in indentation in red, so finding and fixing indentation errors is super easy. Link here. Just use the plugin manager.
String Manipulation
This is a simple plugin that provides the ability to switch a statement or variable name from camelCase to kebab-lowercase to snake_case and more. It also escapes or unescapes strings with literals in them, converts ASCII to Unicode and vice versa, and more. Link here. Two words: plugin manager.
WakaTime
This plugin works with many other IDEs in addition to the JetBrains suite, including Eclipse, VSCode, Xcode, Notepad++, Visual Studio, and more. It accurately keeps track of the amount of time you spend coding, breaking it down into statistics on the amount of time spent in each lanugage, in each IDE, in each project, and on each computer. You get emailed a weekly report, all for free. If you want to keep a history of the time you spend coding (besides the emails), you can purchase a paid plan. Link to plugin here and website with instructions for non-JetBrains IDEs here.
Battery Status
This plugin is really simple, but really useful on a laptop: it displays your current laptop battery percentage in the toolbar at the bottom of the IDE. This is really helpful in fullscreen mode since your battery indicator is usually hidden in fullscreen. Link here.
Platform Specific Software (Mac)
Flycut Clipboard Manager
This is a free utility avaliable from the Mac App Store that keeps a history of everything you cut/copied. You can specifiy the number of "clippings" you'd like it to remember, and you can even sync your clippings across devices with iCloud. This app is very helpful when coding because you can copy many pieces of code and paste the exact ones you want wherever you want them. Link to Flycut in the Mac App Store here.
Xcode IDE
If you have a Mac, chances are you have an iPhone. If you've ever wanted to develop an app for any of Apple's software platforms (iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and macOS), Xcode is the go-to app. All of Apple's platforms support apps built in a newer language called Swift. Swift is basically the best of Python combined with the best of Java. It's very easy to learn, but it's an incredibly powerful language with good safety features and performance built in. Xcode includes the Swift langauge, as well as all the tools needed to built great apps with Swift. Download Xcode from the Mac App Store for free here.
Platform Specific Software (Windows)
Notepad++
Notepad++ is a free text editor that supports many different programming languages. This of it like VSCode without the ability to compile or run code. It's very helpful for editing any sort of code-related file, and it has lots of great tools to make writing code easier. Download here.