Next Steps
Congratulations on finishing the Precourse project!
Before moving on in the curriculum, take some time to familiarize yourself with your local development environment. So far you've made all of your projects in online development environments like Glitch or CodePen. To take your development to the next level you will need to learn to develop and test your code directly on your computer using:
- Visual Studio Code
- Terminal
- Chrome
- Git
Index
Learning Objectives
Git:
- Adding & Committing
- Branching
- Pushing & Pulling
Terminal:
- Commands to know:
- cd, ls, touch, mkdir, rm
- Command Line Apps:
- What are they?
- How do you use them?
- Ones to know: git, node, nano
Working Locally:
- The relationship between your computer and GitHub
- Where to edit files
- Where to run different kinds of files
- HTML + CSS + JS
- Just JS
Specifications
Install the softwares indicated in Installations.
GIT:
- Complete these exercises from learngitbranching.js.org:
- Main: Introduction Sequence & Ramping Up
- Remote: Push & Pull -- Git Remotes!
- Watch and take notes on Git for Ages 4 and up. It's a bit long but very approachable and so worth the effort.
Terminal:
- (If you are on a Windows machine, either install Linux or Cygwin)
- Choose one of these to learn the basics: LearnEnough, Rithmschool,
Working Locally:
- Take notes on your computer:
- Practice working in the full dev environment by taking notes in Visual Studio, committing with terminal, and using a remote GitHub repo to save your notes (be sure to include this on your portfolio!). There is one main advantage to learning remote repos with text files instead of code: If something doesn't work you know it's a problem with Git, not your code.
- Developing HTML, CSS & JS Locally:
- Try moving one of your projects from Glitch to your computer. You'll use Visual Studio to edit and save your code, and Chrome to open the HTML file and see what you site looks like live.
- As a challenge, try writing and editing your notes from command line using Nano. The work-flow is pretty smooth and you'll be forcing yourself to practice using the command line on a daily basis. (Nano comes pre-installed on Linux & Macs).
