Microsoft Windows has improved massively as a developer environment over the past few years. Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) lets you work seamlessly with Linux on Windows without the clunk and overhead of a VM. All of the popular software development tools that figure into common workflows exist in native Windows editions. And Microsoft has introduced a slew of developer amenities directly into the OS that still don’t get the billing they deserve.
None of this is automatic, though. If you want to take maximum advantage of Windows as a development system, you’ll need to do a little legwork. The work isn’t far out of line from the usual ways developers tweak their work environments, but the specific steps matter — and some of them aren’t obvious.
Here’s a walk through the five most important steps to take to configure a Windows system for software development work. Note that you’ll need admin rights on the system to accomplish many of tasks.
Step 1. Install Windows Subsystem for Linux
WSL gives Windows users an entire Linux system at the command line, with less overhead than a VM. The lion’s share of the world’s software development work happens on Linux, or a Unix-like system like macOS, so having an actual Linux system available in a terminal session is a huge boon.
