TJohns.co

Resources

• Remix IDE
• GIT
• IntelliJ Solidity Plugin
• Node.js
• Truffle
• Ganache
• TestRPC
• Solidity Official Site & Docs

You'll probably want to start with Remix.  I suggest one of the first things you do is to install RemixD.  That will allow sharing of a local folder.  Otherwise, you risk losing all your work.  Instructions can be found here.

Install Node.  That will give you access to the NPM (Node Package Manager).  Download link above in resources.  Verify Node & NPM are installed by typing the following in the Terminal:
node -v
npm -v

If you get version numbers from those commands, it's good to go.

Next Install GIT.  This is needed to install RemixD, Web3.js, and possibly some of the other apps.  You'll have to download the .exe and install like a typical application.  There are a lot of options when installing.  I used recommendations from HackerNoon.

A few other things I had to do to install remixd...

npm i npm@latest -g
npm install -g node-gyp
npm install -g python

Still getting tons of errors.  Mostly regarding the lack of Python, so I downloaded and installed that also.  And that didn't work.  Uninstalled Python.  Basically, this software is still experimental and full of bugs apparently.  Nothing goes 'smoothly' when working with Solidity at this point.  At least not when trying to create an environment.

So this probably won't help anyone, but I don't feel bad because the rest of the documentation I found when looking for help was total garbage.  

I'll continue without Remixd (again!)...

Install testrpc:
npm install -g testrpc

Getting another error.  I guess in the past week, that has become deprecated/renamed to ganache-cli.  Says to install Ganache instead, so I'll do that...
npm install -g ganache-clinpm install -g ganache-cli