What development tools are available for a user to use that doesn't require an installation (admin rights)?

Question

Hi everyone,

Got a nice new laptop for work but unfortunately I don't have any admin rights to install anything on it. I'm an amateur developer and would like to utilize the laptop at home to do some fun coding on the side (and to learn). What tools are available out there that I can use that won't require an installation or elevated privileges to use?

My laptop is Win 7 Ultimate.

Interested in doing some OSS development like Rails, Python, PHP, etc I run Chrome and Firefox mainly as my browsers.

Thanks for any input/thoughts!

Answer 1

Notepad and a compiler. You shouldn't need administrative rights to do anything commonplace. You will need administrative rights to do things like debug other processes (but you'd likely have needed admin rights to get a debugger installed...).

Answer 2

You can write all the HTML and javascript you want in any text editor, including Notepad. And you can run the code by opening the file in your browser.