Setup for Lesson
Text Editor
A text editor is the piece of software you use to view and write code. If you have a preferred text editor, please use it. Suggestions for text editors are, Notepad++ (Windows), TextEdit (macOS), Gedit (GNU/Linux), GNU Nano, Vim. Alternatively, there are IDE’s (integrated developer environments) that have more features specifically for coding such as VS Code; there are also IDEs specific to languages will be listed in the appropriate section(s) below.
Git Setup
Windows
We’ll be using Git Bash for both git and a shell to run it in. If you’ve already installed Git Bash then go to the next section. Otherwise, go to git for windows and click Download, then install it. Most of the options can be left on default, but be sure you check these:
- Choosing the default editor used by Git: Make sure Nano is selected from the drop-down. If you’re comfortable with other editors, feel free to change it, but we recommend Nano - we use it as it’s present on Windows, Mac and Linux. If you change it, you might not quite match what we’re doing on-screen.
- Adjusting your PATH environment: Make sure Git from the command line and also from 3rd-party software is selected.
- Choosing HTTPS transport backend: Make sure Use the native Windows Secure Channel Library is selected.
- Configuring the terminal emulator to use with Git Bash: Make sure Use Windows’ default console window is selected.
Mac OS
To use Git you must install the Apple Command Line Tools, this may take a few minutes.
You can obtain these from Apple (requires your Apple ID)
- Select Command Line Tools for Xcode 12 (or higher) and click the link to download the dmg archive.
- If prompted, choose to allow downloads from developer.apple.com
- Open the downloaded dmg archive from the Downloads folder
- Double-click the Command Line Tools.pkg icon to install
Alternatively, you can install the tools from the command line:
$ xcode-select --install
Linux
Git comes pre-installed on most Linux distributions. You can test if it’s installed by running git --version.
If it’s not installed, you can install it by running sudo apt-get install git or sudo yum install git, depending on
your distribution.
GitHub
We’ll be using the website GitHub to host, back up, and distribute our code. You’ll need to create an account there. As your GitHub username will appear in the URLs of your projects there, it’s best to use a short, clear version of your name if you can.