Essential Tools Installation for Backend Engineers

Package Managers

Homebrew (macOS/Linux)

The missing package manager for macOS.

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

SDKMAN! (Java/Kotlin/Scala)

Manage multiple versions of Java, Maven, Gradle, etc.

curl -s "https://get.sdkman.io" | bash
# Then restart terminal and run:
sdk install java 17.0.8-tem

NVM (Node Version Manager)

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.5/install.sh | bash

Development Tools

Docker

# macOS (using Homebrew)
brew install --cask docker

# Ubuntu
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose-plugin

Git

# macOS
brew install git

# Ubuntu
sudo apt install git

JQ (JSON Processor)

Essential for processing JSON in the terminal.

brew install jq

HTTPie (Modern cURL)

brew install httpie

Oh My Zsh

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Databases & Caching (Local Dev)

PostgreSQL

brew install postgresql@15
brew services start postgresql@15

Redis

brew install redis
brew services start redis

MongoDB

brew tap mongodb/brew
brew install mongodb-community@6.0
brew services start mongodb-community@6.0

IDEs & Editors

IntelliJ IDEA (Community)

brew install --cask intellij-idea-ce

VS Code

brew install --cask visual-studio-code

Postman

brew install --cask postman

Cloud CLIs

AWS CLI

brew install awscli

Google Cloud SDK

brew install --cask google-cloud-sdk

Kubectl (Kubernetes)

brew install kubectl