1) Install XCode and the associated command line utilities. This will get you all of Apple's tooling. 2) Install Homebrew. That will let you get (and stay curr

1) Install XCode and the associated command line utilities. This will get you all of Apple's tooling. 2) Install Homebrew. That will let you get (and stay current with) just about anything else you need. Homebrew has supported M1 for a while now. At least for now, MacOS does come with some stuff like Ruby and Python already installed, but that's not going to be the case forever, and the versions that come with the system tend to be pretty far out of date. You many want to install node and npm too. I recommend installing newer ones using Homebrew (or some other package manager of your choice) unless you have some strong reason for wanting to use the version that comes with MacOS. Ruby, Python, and Node are often used as scripting glue for other developer tools (even ones that don't specifically use those languages) so I think it's good to have current versions of all of those. Depending on what you're doing, you may or may not want to install gcc. Apple's C (which comes with XCode) is LLVM-based these days. For many things it doesn't matter, but for a few packages only gcc can build them properly. I'm holding off on installing that until I need it, personally. So far I haven't, but I've only had my M1 for about a month and have mostly been doing Node stuff with it. I did have gcc on my old machine, because there were a couple of things I used from time to time that needed it.