Lesson 1-2

Things you will need

Just like anything you make in life, you need tools. For a PB&J, you need peanut butter, jelly, bread, a device to spread both items, etc. Git is no different. Here are the things you will need in order to git sucessfully. All of these softwares are free, and some ask for an optional donation if you want to support them!

  1. Git
    2.

    Git, just like Java, Python, and C is a language. Your machine needs to be able to speak Git. So install it from the link above,

  2. GitHub Desktop

    3. This program will allow you interact with GitHub, and post your code on GitHub as well as get newer versions when they are created

  3. Terminal on Mac (already installed on all Macs) [or puTTY if you use windows]

    4. Both of these programs serve as UNIX machines that you can interact with. They connect to servers and they speak Git. On Terminal, you can even navigate your hard drive via different commands (I'll have a cheatsheet for this at the end of the book). If you are windows you will need puTTY.

  4. CyberDuck for Mac (and windows too) or WinSCP for windows

    5. WINDOWS USERS: You got options! CyberDuck is apparently for both Mac and PC (a shock for me, the author, because the windows version was recently released, apparently). Both of these programs are like the finder/file explorer interface for servers. You will only need these if you intend on interacting with a server [like at work/school etc].

Get all of these softwares up and running and then you'll be ready to Git! Ask your iT department for access to a server for apps like Cyberduck and WinSCP. They should be able to help you set them up.

Please note that from now on I will reference puTTY as Terminal. These two programs are the same, one just runs on PC, the other comes on Mac.