Quite a bit of additional software on top of the basic Ubuntu system will be needed. First I install using apt-get install:
emacs, programmers editor
eclipse, SDK for Java but also useful for C or C++ programming
apache2, the WEB server
gnome-system-tools, user and group management
tkdiff showing differences between ascii files. Very useful!
To get the skype button in the bar of start buttons to work, copy /usr/share/applications/skype to
~/.local/share/applications and modify the Exec line to point to /opt/bin/Skype
git is needed to download bleeding edge softwarercs the revision control system
rcs the revision control system
svn (apt-get install subversion) another program to give access to source repositories
imagemagick image format conversion programmer
gimp the image manipulation program
k3b dvd burner
Please try those programs and if you don't know what they are doing, have a look at the man pages.