Moreover, much of what we'll be taking a look at today is either free, open-source, or both! There will be a few mentions of paid software as alternatives to the free options, but I've personally used every piece of commercial software in this article. Between official tooling such as WSL2 right around the corner to third-party offerings becoming more-and-more mature, there's never been a better time to be a developer on the Windows platform.
What many don't know is that Windows has gained many of these options over the years. Some of the top contenders I've heard are: Ask any developer running a Linux or MacOS machine, and they'll be able to tell you what makes their systems such a strong contender for software development.