There are so many programs out there which one can use to develop websites and every person will most likely tell you to use a different program. So this list is not to say these are the best programs out there to use but they are, for what I need, the best option.
This is a text editor developed by GitHub. It initial released was end of February 2014 and went out of beta end of June 2015. It is known by its developers as the "hackable text editor for the 21st Century". What makes this text editor so great is that it is basically written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript as it was build using web technologies. This allows, if you have knowledge in the use of CoffeeScript and Less to customise the text editor to your liking. It is also available on all mayor operating systems which include Windows, MacOS and Linux.
Download Atom - Free
You can think of Notepad++ as a version of Windows’ Notepad on steroids. It has built in tab support which allows you to open multiple text documents in a single windows. It has also color coding, when saving the file in different formats, to make it easier to work with. I can guarantee you once you use Notepad++ you will never go back to the classic.
Download Notepad++ - Free
I have added Dreamweaver to this list as it sometimes happens that I use it, but it is not my main editor. What makes Dreamweaver so nice that it has a lot of build in tools that makes it very easy to create elements such as tables, forms, etc. Another feature is that it can be used for both for web design and web development as it has a feature known as Live View, which can show you how the website might look like in a browser. This is more ideal for straight forward HTML, CSS and JavaScript development, not so much for server side scripting.
Download Dreamweaver - US$19.99/mo
Not everyone has the money to buy themselves a home server to use for development, this is where something like Wamp is very useful. WAMP stands for W= Windows, A=Apache, M=Mysql/MariaDB and P=PHP. This program creates a virtual PHP server on your Windows computer, which will allow you to develop PHP-based websites. Sadly Wamp is only for Windows but you do get alternatives for other Operating Systems.
Windows: Download Wamp - Free
MacOS: Download Mamp - Free
Cross Platform: Download Xampp - Free
Now one of the most important programs to use would be a browser. I personally use Google Chrome as my main browser but it is important during the development process to use multiple different browser to test if your website looks and works like it should on all browsers. The browsers I would advise to have are Firefox, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge, as these are the most used browsers. Take note that I recommended Internet Explorer only for testing purposes not as your main browser.
Download Google Chrome - Free
Download Mozilla Firefox - Free
Download Opera - Free
