Course Software

Here are instructions for getting your system ready to follow along with the core tools we use in the course.

A browser

We use a web browser to run our programs in this course. Any web browser is fine so long as you are able to enable the “developer tools”. If you’re unsure, just used Chrome or Firefox. You probably already have one or both of these installed, but if not, here are the links to install them:

VS Code

We use VS Code as our text editor. It’s a nice, free, text editor. Even if you prefer some other text editor, you should use VS Code.

  1. Go to https://code.visualstudio.com/
  2. Download VS Code to your computer
  3. Install it by following its instructions

Extensions/packages

One great thing about modern text editors is that they are highly extensible via extensions/packages. Feel free to install any of these you’re interested in, but at the very least install Live Server by searching for it in the search bar of the “Extensions” section (the four little boxes with one flying away on the left-hand side of the VS Code window)

GitHub Desktop

We will be using version control as a central part of this course. To make our lives easier we’re going to use GitHub Desktop so we have a nice user-interface to version control.

  1. Go to https://desktop.github.com/
  2. Use the link to download GitHub Desktop to your computer
  3. Install it

For now, don’t run GitHub Desktop as you won’t have created your course repository, which is what we will use it for.

Zoom

We will sometimes use Zoom. It is the dominant videoconferencing software at the moment and the one endorsed by the university.

  1. Go to https://zoom.us/download and follow the download instructions

To use Zoom you will usually simply be emailed a link that looks something like

https://concordia-ca.zoom.us/my/pippin.barr

When you click the link your browser will try to open Zoom and connect to the videoconference. If something goes funny, you can also join a meeting by running Zoom yourself and entering the “Meeting ID”, which is the 10-digital number at the end of the link above.

Discord

We will generally use Discord to communicate as a class. Discord is a fairly standard instant messaging, voice- and video-chat, and screen sharing application. To use Zoom it is best to have the application on your computer. You’ll also need an account.

  1. Go to https://discord.com/register and follow the instructions to register for a Discord account
  2. Go to https://discord.com/new to download the Discord application for your computer
  3. Run Discord and log in

You will be emailed a link to join the course Discord. Please don’t share it with anyone outside the course.

Summary

We now have the key software for this course.

  1. We use a browser (like Chrome or Firefox) to run our programs
  2. We use VS Code as a text editor to write our programs
  3. We use GitHub Desktop and GitHub to store our work in a repository
  4. We use Zoom for live videoconferencing when needed
  5. We use Discord as our home base for communicating about the course