Getting setup tutorial

Before you get started with this course, you need to install a few tools and create a few accounts. All of these things are free and available on all major platforms (Windows, OS X, and Linux).

Sign up

GitHub - We will store all code in GitHub. There is also a Student Developer Pack which gives you unlimited private repositories and other useful resources.

Required tools

Slack - A group chat tool that we will use for daily communication. Slack is available as a Web app, desktop and mobile application. The desktop application is recommended.
GitHub Desktop - This tool makes working with GIT visual.
Visual Studio Code - Code editor we will be using throughout the course.
Google Chrome - Web browser with developer tools that will allow us to inspect Web pages and javascript.

Command line tools

Node JS and NPM - These tools will help us build modern Web pages.

These tools can be downloaded from the website or installed via Homebrew (MacOS only) with the following commands:

$ /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
$ brew cask install google-chrome
$ brew cask install slack
$ brew cask install visual-studio-code
$ brew cask install github
$ brew install node

Troubleshooting

GIT username or email address error

If you get this error when pushing to GitHub Desktop

Screenshot of GIT authentication error

Open a Terminal ( instructions) or Command Prompt ( instructions) and type the following commands. Replace {First name}, {Last name}, {email} with your name and email address you use to sign up for GitHub.com.

$ git config --global user.email "{email}"
$ git config --global user.name "{First name} {Last name}"

Do not include the dollar sign ( $) when copy/pasting into the command line.

Customizing VS Code

These extensions will help you as a developer get the most out of Visual Studio Code.