Welcome to the Code Fellows SEA-D44 Front End Development Accelerator course. The following document will outline the primary expectations that we have for all students to be prepared with on DAY ONE of the class.
This is a course that will focus 100% around building software. So in order to accomplish this task, we need to ensure that you show up to class with a fully working and highly operational laptop computer. It can be a Mac, Unix or Windows box, we are not concerned about that too much.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of lectures will be showing examples of code using a Mac on OS X. Their may be configuration differences between Unix or Windows that you will have to address. During lectures we will do our best to provide alternate platform solutions, but there will be limited time for platform troubleshooting.
We do ask that whatever computer you show up with, you know how to use it well. This is not a computer 101 class and we will be speeding through topics quickly. If you are unable to complete class work because of your inability to configure your computer, that will be an issue that we need to resolve quickly.
If you are using a Mac, make sure that you have Xcode installed. Basically you need a C level code compiler to install a lot of the magical goodies we will use in class.
You should be able to install this via Apple's App Store or download from here.
There are tools that we will be using that have a dependency on Node.js, so it's a good idea to make sure that it's installed and operational on your computer by day one as well.
Another tool that we will become very familiar with over the course is the Command Line Interface or CLI. Some great reading to get you rolling if you are not yet familiar with using the Terminal.app on OS X are;
While Terminal.app is good, iTerm2 is better! Download and profit!
Learning Git is a career long learning curve, but we have expectations coming into the class that you will have some basics already addressed and configured;
- You MUST have a Github account
- Have Git installed
- Have either attended, or tested out of, the Git workshop and have downloaded/read Git for everyone
- Have Git bascis understood;
- can
git inita repo - understands what a
branchis - when asked to fork a repo, you don't reply with
o_O - merging is not only a traffic concept
- can
If you do not yet have a Github account and need to sync Github with your laptop, please be sure to read over this section on setting up Github.
Another process that we will make heavy use of is Git Pull Requests. If you are not familiar with this, please be sure to read/review Using pull requests. This is a rather involved process and there are nuances that need to be discussed, so consider this an introduction of sorts and we will cover more of this in class.
For the vast majority of the course, we will not be using WYSIWYG editors or any type of GUI application to write code or access repositories. If you have a text editor that you prefer, you are welcome to use it.
By far, the preferred text editor of Code Fellows is Sublime Text. It's very easy to configure and is highly customizable. There is no need to buy a license at this time, there is a very generous trial period.
For more information on using Sublime Text, please this section on Working w/Sublime
You should also read this section on Link your Terminal.app to Sublime text for quick and easy open access from the CLI to Sublime Text.