Installfest!

Sign up for GitHub at github.com

(GitHub is a cloud source code management place of awesome, and we'll be using it throughout the course to save and share our code.)

Install git

To check if you have it already installed, type git into a terminal.

• Download and Set up Git:
  • For Windows: you can install Git for Windows - this should also install a program called Git Bash
  • For Mac: download the latest version of Git directly, or download GitHub for Mac and install from there.
  • For Linux: apt-get install git (or equivalent) ;)
  • Optional: Save your GitHub account authentication to save retyping your GitHub credentials all the time.

Learn about git

• Work through Try Github
• Optional: You can get more practice here.

Install Python 2.7

• Mac/Linux: This should already be installed! \_o_/
  • To check, open a terminal and type python -V
  • You should see 2.7.something
  • If not, download from python.org
  • Mac (Optional): Install more developer tools.
• Windows: Download from python.org

Explore the Terminal and learn some basic commands.

• Go to the Command Line Crash Course and work through as much of it as you can.
• If you are on Windows, make sure you have Git Bash (see above), and then look at this "Explore git bash" guide.
• If you prefer games, try this too (in-browser).

Install a text editor, if you don't already have one!

I thoroughly recommend Sublime Text.

Test Out

If you can do the following you are all set!

• Create a GitHub repository called something like 'python-class'
• From the command line:
  • Create a directory
  • Initialize Git
  • Create an empty file called README.md
  • Add README.md to Git
  • Commit with a vaguely meaningful commit message
  • Push to GitHub

(README.md is a Markdown file, although an empty one. Markdown is a common format used to style text without the agony of HTML: you can learn more over here. Though it's not going to be used in the course, you'll probably encounter .md files here and there.)

Extra instructions for Windows