Getting Your Computer Ready for Web Programming

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

You are getting ready for your programming boot camp. You got your PC or Laptop or Mac. This article is about getting your computing device up and running with the essential software and related things.

Note : This post is a sequel to my earlier post — Getting Ready For Your Coding Boot camp Classes

Note 2 : This post is part of my own web programming boot camp. More details here.

Editor — Visual Studio Code

You will need to write your HTML, CSS and JS using an editor. I strongly recommended the editor I use and recommend — VS Code.

Download and Install Link Here

Browser — Firefox or Chrome or Your Choice

The code you write, you need to debug and see the output. I strongly recommend the browser I use — Firefox.

Download and Install Link Here

Node JS

Node JS is essential as it helps to run localhost servers easily, among other things.

Note : Use the LTS version on the website.

Download and Install Link Here

Localhost Server — HTTP-SERVER node package

There are many localhost packages that are available for node JS. I recommend this lightweight package called http-server.

Download and Install Link Here

Cloud — Azure or AWS (optional)

Once you build your web app, you may wish to show it to the world. For that you need to deploy it on a web app, usually free web app. You can use Azure, AWS and many similar cloud providers for that.

Postman — API testing (optional)

Inevitably, you will end up consuming JSON web api servers as part of your boot-camp. For API testing and consuming, Postman is the best.

Download and Install Link Here

CodePen — Code Anywhere (optional)

If you want to code directly in a browser (I personally dont like it, but many people do), you could simply use CodePen and skip most of the above steps.

CodePen Website

Final Note

The above are the tools I use almost everyday and using for years. I also use them in my training sessions.

Hope it helps.

Note : If you are following my tutorial, then, the next step after doing all the above, is at this link — Hello World — HTML, CSS, JS with Bootstrap

I work as a full time freelance software developer and coding tutor. Hire me at UpWork or Fiverr. My personal website is here. I also have a Podcast. Thanks for reading.