Set Up Your Environment

WHAT KIND OF COMPUTER DO YOU NEED? LITERALLY FUCKING ANYTHING WORKS.

Windows, Mac, Linux, whatever.

If you have a modern computer, great. If it's older, you're still fine.

Coding is not compute-intensive. Old ass computers work fine.

GET VS CODE INSTALLED

You're going to need an IDE, which is a program for managing all your code. Just get VS Code.

I used to be stubborn. I used Atom for too long. VS Code is better.

VS Code by Microsoft is the standard, and most programmers use it. There are technically alternatives, but VS Code works on Linux (which I use) along with Mac and Windows. It's everywhere. It's easy. Just go get VS Code.

F**k it. Microsoft won. (Also ignore my screenshot, unless you're using Linux.) You'll probably see a thing that says Mac or Windows. When you get super deep like me, you'll eventually run Linux on your desktop machine. You'll also be in on the joke where Linux people say "2024 is the year of the Linux desktop" even though it's not, because that's just how the joke works. I'd explain the joke but it would take too long.

Download VS Code (https://code.visualstudio.com/).

VS CODE EXTENSIONS (DAY 1 TOOLBOX)

When you install VS Code, it'll be vanilla. Nothing to it. You want to give it tools. Think of it like a toolbox with some tools, but you can add your own. This list of tools will be a good starting point.

Listen to me right now: Do not use a code assistant or an AI assistant until you get the fundamentals down. Intellicode, Tabnine and Github Copilot are all great. But please try to learn the "old school way" before you get all the tools that make people like me lazy. These tools don't make you better. They do menial and repetitive tasks faster. You are still in the zone where you need to learn that menial and repetitive shit.

For all the others, just search in the extensions for each one. Copy and paste until you have everything here. (There's an easy "install" button for each one.)

Visual and Cleanup Tools:

• Prettier
• colorize (It'll work better for you than me. I'm colorblind.)
• Code Spell Checker
• Icon Fonts
• indent-rainbow
• Peacock

Functional Tools:

• Live Server
• Docker (we'll get to this later when you install Docker)
• PostgreSQL
• GitLens
• SQLite
• TODO Highlight
• Pylance
• Python
• Regex Previewer
• Remote - SSH
• autoDocstring
• Auto Rename Tag
• Auto Close Tag

GET THE UDEMY PERSONAL PLAN

You're about to take a metric ton of Udemy courses. (If you choose.)

The Udemy Personal Plan is $199 a year, or $29.99 a month.

BUT WAIT. YOU CAN ALSO (MAYBE) GET IT FOR FREE! SEE THE NEXT SECTION FOR DETAILS.

I do not get paid any affiliate links for this.

Udemy Personal Plan (https://www.udemy.com/personal-plan/).

The first course I'm going to tell you to take is $199 on Udemy for a single course… but it's also included in the Personal Plan. So just get the personal plan.

I will have both paid Udemy courses along with free ways to learn how to do everything. In my opinion the paid Udemy courses are worth it, but if you're trying to do this all for free, I'll have a free option for everything as well.

SOME OF YOU CAN GET UDEMY FREE FROM GALE

This is a hack that will save you money. Click this link, and then search your institution and zip code. (This is only for US residents as far as I can tell.)

link.gale.com/apps/menu (https://link.gale.com/apps/menu)

Your school or library may participate. If you don't already have a library card, this is a good reason to go get one.

SIGN UP FOR GITHUB

This is going to be ground zero for all of your professional portfolio.

It's free. Just sign up. We'll get back to this part later, I just want you to have a GitHub account.

SIGN UP FOR AWS

There is a free tier to get started (https://aws.amazon.com/free/).

They want you to get addicted. That's why they make it free to start.

PASSWORD MANAGEMENT

You're going to be signing up for a lot of stuff. How are you managing your passwords and security?

You're about to be managing a lot of credentials (that's how we say "passwords" in the big data biz), and that means passwords for your tools, but also things like database usernames and passwords, environment passwords, etc. You can't manage all that yourself.