Setting Up a Development Environment

While many argue that the best way to learn to code is to simply start coding, having the right set of tools makes coding much more enjoyable and productive. In this workshop, we explore the differences between development environments and basic text editors and we will set up a simple development environment using Visual Studio Code. Moreover, this workshop introduces VSCode extensions, such as Git, SSH, and Docker, and gives you resources to learn more about them.

Learning objectives

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

1. Recognize the role of a development environment and source code editor in computer programming
2. Become familiar with the Visual Studio Code interface and tools
3. Run codes and debug in Visual Studio Code environment (in Python)
4. Employ Extensions to connect Visual Studio Code with other development tools such as SSH, Git, and Docker

Before the workshop

• Install Visual Studio Code on your system

• Install a Python Interpreter on your system. We will use Python programming language to show language-specific capabilities of a development environment such as VS Code

• Install Git and take a look at the Introduction to Git workshop

Schedule

Slides

Find the workshops slide below or open it in a new tab:

More resources

• Official Visual Studio Code Documentation
• Getting Started with Python in VS Code
• Setting up a Python development environment in VS Code
• Introduction to Git and GitHub
• Introduction to Docker
• Introduction to the Unix Shell
• Get started with the Windows Subsystem for Linux

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