[1] Setting Up Your Environment

Here you can find all the links to the tools and instructions we need for this course.

Chromium Browser

One of the environments we will be learning to program for is a web browser. The concepts we will cover can work across any web browser, but to keep the lessons simple we will only work in one of two different browsers.

Microsoft Edge

If you are working in Windows 11 or an up to date version of Windows 10, then you already have a modern Chromium browser known as Edge. This is the browser I develop with on my Windows, Mac, and Linux machines.

If you would like to install this browser then click here for download instructions.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is the most popular modern browser of choice and has all of the same features of Microsoft Edge and can be downloaded here.

Code Editor

Next we need a tool to actually create and edit our code. There are many great options out there, both free and paid. We will be using the most popular Code editor among developers, Visual Studio Code. It also happens to be completely free.

VS Code can be downloaded here.

Node.js

The other environment we will be developing for is a server side technology known as Node.js. In our case, this means we can execute JavaScript files out side of a web browser.

The simplest way of installing Node.js (moving forward I will just be referring to it as Node), is to visit this page and install for which ever operating system you are on. Make sure the LTS version is selected instead of Current; this is the most stable version that is not likely to change features out from under us.

As a quick note about installing Node on a Windows system: when you are going through the graphical interface for installing Node, you may find some additional options that you need to have checked. There options are something to the affect of "Add node to PATH" and "Install Additional Tools". Make sure those are both active when going through the graphical interface.

You may also see a blue terminal window during the isntallation. This may be after the step of "Install Additional Tools". And it is infact installing some more behind the scenes software that will make working with Node easier. This part of the process can sometimes take a long time (hours on some machines). Do not panic because of how long it takes, it has most likely not frozen. Please just be patient at this point.

To test that node is installed and will work properly for out lessons we are going to open a terminal on our desktop.

For Windows you can go to your start menu and search for the application called cmd.

For MacOS you can search for Terminal with spotlight.

This should open a little window that looks like it is straight out of a hacker movie. In this window enter in:

node -v

Your terminal should output some text stating the version of node installed on your machine.

Everything we need

And that's it. These are the only tools we need to start our journey. If you have any questions regarding the installation of these programs then please do reach out at joshua@jshoemaker.dev