The Editor
The tool you will be looking at the most when working on your computer will be either your browser or your editor. This guide will set you up with one of the world's most used editors which should be suitable for most. This guide is not directed to those already comfortable with their editor of choice but may introduce some useful functions which you may not have used before.
So which editor should I choose?
Short answer: Visual Studio Code. (VSCode)
Long answer: When writing this guide we compared different editors to determine which is the "best". Editors are one of the tools that people have very strong opinions about, and you will likely hear people talk about their editor and why it's so good. But there are several reasons we recommend VSCode:
- Available on all platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux)
- An intuitive and user friendly interface.
- Not specific to a certain programming language or environment (e.g. PyCharm which only works for Python)
- Extensive plugin support for different languages and for use in certain courses at Chalmers.
- Very configurable to your needs with a simple to understand GUI. (Graphical User Interface)
Setup
To get started, begin by downloading VSCode from the webpage.
Did you know that you can open links in a new tab by either
- Holding !kbd[!ctrl] while clicking on the link
- Middle clicking on the link
After installing VSCode, start it like you would any other program. We will now go through the most basic functionality you will need to start programming! After this we will go through some useful shortcuts, extensions and ways to navigate your editor. Of course it's absolutely okay if you can't remember all of it, it's going to be a lot of new information so come back here any time you want a refresher!
Further reading
If you want to look at the official documentation yourself you can do so here.