If you're here, you're about to start
the Working with Data and APIs course on the coding train.
So what I want to do in this video is pretty simple.
I just want to give you a quick list of all the things you
either need to know before you start the course
and what kind of tools and software and things
you need to have running on a computer
in order to be able follow along in the tutorials.
So probably the most important thing
is just JavaScript, the programming language itself.
So if you're a total new programmer, if you never
programmed before, maybe you want
to check out my intro series about learning
to code with JavaScript using the P5 JS library.
Also it would be really helpful if you understood
the basics of HTML, how to write an HTML web
page, what the Dom is, what Dom elements are on the page.
So if that's new to you, once again,
I offer you some resources in this video's description.
Knowing a little bit about CSS or cascading style sheets
could also be useful, but definitely not required.
And that really covers all of the things
that you need to know before you get started.
So now let me move on to what do you
need to have operationally on your computer
to follow the tutorials.
So first, thing you need is a code editor.
In the videos, I'm using Visual Studio Code.
It's a pretty popular code editor that a lot of people
use now, but there's no reason you need to use it.
You could use a number of any other text editor
that you could find on your computer,
Atom is one, Brackets, Sublime, there's somebody text editors.
Everybody has their favorite.
You also don't need to use a text editor locally
on your computer.
You could use, at least for module 1,
you could use an online code editor, Code Pen, JS Fiddle,
the P5 web editor, any of these would work.
But if you want to follow on exactly what I'm doing,
Visual Studio Code is the editor that I'm using.
Because I'm using a local text editor,
in order for the examples I'm writing to work,
I also need to run a web server, and a lot
of the text editors like Visual Studio Code, for example,
have extensions that will run a web server for you.
You can run a web server by typing in some commands
into your terminal access to your computer.
And so actually if this is new to you,
I might refer you to my workflow series
where I cover how to download a text editor,
how to get shell access, terminal
access to your computer, how to launch a web server, all
of that sort of stuff.
But things really change when I get
into modules 2 and 3 of this series,
because there I start using something called Node dot JS,
so you absolutely will want to have
shell access to your computer.
You'll notice I'm using an application called iTerm, which
is a Mac terminal application.
You can use just the default Mac terminal application.
If you're on Windows, the command prompt.
Power Shell, Get Bash, if you're on Linux.
I assume you know what you're doing in terms of shell access.
So that's what you can use, because you're
going to want to download and install
Node and run node commands from terminal itself.
You don't actually need to do this right now,
because when I get in to module 2,
I'll explain to you what Node is and how to install it,
but if you want to be up and running
and ready for that go ahead and install that now.
At the very end of this course, I
look at deploying your project to a web server in the cloud,
and there I make use of something
called Git, which is version control software, and GitHub,
which is a website where you can take your Git repos
and put them on line.
That may be completely unfamiliar to you.
I will give you a sort of basic primer on that
when I get to that, but that's certainly
will be something that you might want to check out.
I have a video series about GitHub
as well, before you get started with this course,
but it won't come in all the way until module 3.
So hopefully, I've covered everything
that you need to know before you get
started with this first video.
I am sure that I have forgotten something,
so I'd encourage you to check out the video's description,
because as people are watching the course,
they're asking questions, and I realize I'm forgetting things.
I will add them to the video's description.
So at least there there will be a list with links of everything
that you might need to know or have before you get started
with the first video.
So that's it.
This is it.
I'll see you in the next video.
Oh, I do have my train whistle.
Goodbye.