before_arrival.md

Before you arrive

Get a laptop

If you do not yet have a laptop, get one. If you want something inexpensive, a ChromeBook with at least 4GB of RAM is a good option.

Set up a dev environment

Get your computer set up for software development.

If you have a Mac, you are more-or-less ready to go.

If you have a ChromeBook, you will want to install Linux, using crouton. If you want help, then just try google. There are several decent tutorials out there.

If you have a Windows PC, you may want to consider also installing Linux on it. It can be a bit of a pain, but is probably preferable (at least, in our experience) to trying to work with Windows. Good luck.

Install a text editor

We suggest Atom. Atom is free and maintained by the open-source community.

Get familiar with the command line

We are going to be spending a lot of time working on the command line. If you don't know anything about the command line, then try Zed Shaw's CLI Crash Course.

Learn the basics of HTTP

Here's a pretty good introduction.

Git

Work through our Introduction to Git and Version Control.

READMEs and markdown

This document is a README. We are going to use them a lot on this course.

Read Readme Driven Development and then, if you do not already know markdown, complete this short tutorial.