Welcome!

I'm sure all this new stuff can be very confusing - we've all been there once. What the heck is Discord? What the heck is GitHub? Why do I have to download all this crap?

Hopefully some of those questions will be answered here!

Requirements

Well you already probably have a computer and an internet connection if you've made it this far. So thats good!

If you do not want to participate and just want to follow along, thats more than fine. I don't reccomend it, but I'm not going to tell you how to live your life. If that is the case, you just need to install Discord to watch along.

Discord

Also available on mobile! Discord is a calling application, similar to Zoom or Skype etc. The difference with discord is that it has text channels for messaging, and the calls are organized into "rooms" that you can enter and exit at will, just like real life! It can be confusing at first, so don't be afraid to text / dm me and I can help explain.

Visual Studio Code

VS Code is a development environment! For our use case, it is just a cool text editor and a place to easily run our code.

While Visual Studio Code is my favorite, and one of the simplelest IMO, there are other alternates. If you want to try another one, go for it!

Python

This is the programming language that we will be learning! It is one of the most widely used languages, due to its simplicity, flexibility, and wide adoption. You will be able to find a lot of tutorials on python

The website is a little confusing, but you should be able to just click the yellow Download Python 3.x.x at the top of the page.

DO NOT FORGET When installing, follow these steps:

1. Check the "Add to PATH" button at the bottom
2. "Custom Installation"
3. You do NOT need to install tcl/tk and IDLE. I don't like them. But if you do download them, its no big deal.
4. On the next page, I would reccomend checking every box (i.e. click the optional downloads for debugging)
5. Click 'Install'

Once it is done installing, make sure it did so properly by doing the following:

Windows

1. Hit start, type cmd, then hit enter to open the command prompt.
2. Type python --version and hit enter. If it was succesfull, you should see the version number

MacOS

1. Open the 'terminal' application (e.g. command + space bar, type terminal and hit enter)
2. Type python --version and hit enter. If it was succesfull, you should see the version number

GitHub (Optional)

Thats this website! GitHub isn't a download, but I do reccomend making an account to save all your code.

But I don't want to download all that crap

Okay, fine. You'll still need discord. And your experience will be worse. But you can just use this website: https://replit.com/languages/python3

Getting Started

1. Click the green Code button in the top right, then click Download ZIP
2. Open your downloads, and extract the ZIP. Feel free to delete the original ZIP after extraction
3. Proceed to the folder Week 1 and read the README for further instruction!