if you rely on Homebrew it may be several months before the packages you need are all updated.

A large part of software in Homebrew is already pre-compiled (bottled) for High Sierra:

    % find Formula -name '*.rb' | wc -l
    4363
    % find Formula -name '*.rb' -exec grep "sha.*:high_sierra" {} \; | wc -l
    3634

Most of the stuff that I have been installing the last one or two weeks was installed as bottles.