Preparing to Code Locally

We use a text editor to code. These editors have become so sophisticated that we call them a Development Environment. Furthermore, if you can run your code in that same program we call it an Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Table of Contents

Install VSCode
VSCode Extensions

Visual Studio Code

For this course, we will be using one of the most popular IDE's - Visual Studio Code.
It is a free byproduct of Microsoft's Visual Studio suite of programming tools. And it's awesome.

If your computer is running Windows

If your computer is running MacOS

If your computer is running ChromeOS (a Chromebook), you must:

Option 1 - Follow this video
Option 2 - Follow the steps below

Setting Up Our ChromeOS

1. Install the Linux Development Environment
Go to your settings (click on the clock, then the settings icon)
Either type in "Linux" in the search, or go to Advanced - Developers
Then click on the "Turn On" button in the top-right.

2. An install wizard will walk you through the process.
On the first page, click "Next" to get started.
You'll be asked to choose a username for your Linux - keep it short.
It will recommend using 10Gb of space - that's more than enough.
Click "Install" and go get a coffee because it talks a while.

3. After the install finishes (and there's no errors) you will get a terminal window.
This is a command interface you can type into to run programs or list files.
We need to update the Linux we just installed.
Type in: sudo apt update and hit enter. This will ask for a list of updates.
Once it's finished run: sudo apt -y upgrade this will do the upgrading.

After all those upgrades have installed, we have a fully-functional Linux Development Environment running on our Chrome device. But we don't have a coding environment - Visual Studio Code (the IDE).

4. Inside the terminal type arch and hit enter to see what kind of computer you have. Then, go to the VSCode download page and download the appropriate .deb file for your architecture. Save it somewhere memorable and temporary like your "Downloads" folder.

5. We're almost done! Go find that file you just downloaded (use the ChromeOS Files app) and then double-click on the file to start the install process. Wait for it to finish. When it's done, you'll have a new icon in your launcher for VSCode!

Feel free to launch VSCode and have a look around - but be careful. It's easy to change settings by accident and make it less functional.

Next - we need to install some extensions into VSCode to make our lives easier.

(VScode has built-in support for the languages but those languages need to be available on your computer. Python, JavaScript, C++, Java, PHP, etc, may or may not have come with your computer's operating system)

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