what are the "standard" programming tools available in Debian?

[rich <rehartma@artsci.wustl.edu>]

Howdy everyone,

I was wondering: what are the tools available in Debian that one would
consider part of the "standard" toolbox of a programmer?

I have programmed for several years in BASIC, and dabbled Fortran and
Pascal. Now I want to learn C, Perl, and (maybe) Java... mostly for
relatively simple tasks around my lab such as coming up with programs to
generate forms for random assignment of experimental groups, taking raw
data and manipulating it in various ways into forms suitable for pasting
into a statistics package and presentation, etc. In addition, I'm trying
to design a lab web-page and would like to be able to have collaboraters
post and retrieve data from an SQL-type system...

My basic question is: for these languages and tasks, what tools would
make my life easier? I know about Gdb, but haven't figured out how to
use it yet... what else does Debian offer me?


Thanks in advance,

Rich