Learning to Code

Getting started programming with some essential skills.

Terminal (command-line) basics

The command-line is where the programmer spends most of their time. Knowledge of a handful of common terminal commands is important. Flags (e.g., --help) are options and give flexibility to the commands. All commands have great getting started tutorials / common uses with flags. Even experienced programmers are constantly Googling simple things. Only the most commonly used options are (eventually) memorized via muscle memory.

• ls
• cd
• pwd
• mkdir
• cp
• echo
• cat
• rm

Google stuff like: "using cp basics ubuntu".

Git & GitHub

git is a command-line tool, GitHub is the online interface.

Go through this hello world guide

The following is a pretty standard workflow for working on code, get to know it very well:

• git clone $yourRepo
• cd $yourRepo
• git log
• ls
• git status
• make a new branch
• edit a file
• git status
• git add -u
• git status
• git commit -m "some commit"
• push your branch to GitHub
• make a Pull Request

Editor

There's so many options. I learned vim and am stuck in my ways. You'll probably want to try Atom seems like it's what all the cool kids are using these days. (Unrelated to ATOMs, btw).

Hello World

Every programming language has a "Hello World" tutorial. Google them & try a few different languages:

• python
• JavaScript
• bash -> not a programming language but very useful; executes stuff on the command-line for you

Make some customized Hello World apps, commit them to your repo, push a new branch, make a PR and we'll go from there.

Markdown

Is the preferred file format (.md) for text files that aren't code. It's good to know some basics and get comfortable using it.