Getting Started With the Terminal, Git, and Node
Most JavaScript developers make heavy use of the bash terminal, git, and Node. Chances are, you won’t get far on your JavaScript journey without them.
Node will be used for both server-side and client-side programming in JavaScript, and npm, which comes with Node, is the standard package manager for JavaScript, meaning that it’s how you’ll access all the open source libraries available for use in your projects.
Git keeps track of changes to source code over time, and helps you share those changes and collaborate with other developers. GitHub is the website most JavaScript developers use to coordinate work on Git repositories using the integrated issue tracker, and peer code reviews with pull requests.
The bash terminal is a text-based command-line interface. Instead of pointing and clicking, you type commands to get things done. It is the standard way for interacting with both Node and the command-line Git tools. The following are a few resources you might find useful while you’re starting to learn these tools.
Learning Git and the Terminal
If you need help learning Git and the Terminal, check out these free resources:
Terminal
Git
Installing Node
If you want to install Node, there are two ways I recommend:
- For OS X and Linux, use nvm
- For Windows, use the official installer
For OS X and Linux, nvm solves permissions issues that you’d normally encounter with the default installer, and it also allows you to easily manage multiple versions of Node, so you can test your code using different versions of the Node engine. Very handy!
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Eric Elliott is the author of “Programming JavaScript Applications” (O’Reilly), and “Learn Universal JavaScript App Development with Node & React”. He has contributed to software experiences for Adobe Systems, Zumba Fitness, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN, BBC, and top recording artists including Usher, Frank Ocean, Metallica, and many more.
He spends most of his time in the San Francisco Bay Area with the most beautiful woman in the world.
