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 many editors to find out which would be most suitable for those just starting. Editors are one of those tools that people have strong opinions about so we decided on VSCode on the following grounds:

  • Available on all platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux)
  • Not specific to a certain programming language or environment (e.g. PyCharm which only works for Python)
  • Extensive plugin support for all environments used in courses at Chalmers.
  • Does not require any computer knowledge to get started1

The only editor which truly fits all of these is Visual Studio Code.

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 click on the link

After installing VSCode, start it. You can now begin programming by creating a new file and start typing. We will now go through some tips on how to use the program but it is okay if you don't remember all of it, you can always come back here later when you have become more used to programming.

Further reading

If you want to look at the official documentation yourself you can do so here.

1 While certain evangelists will tell you otherwise, Vim and Emacs are not suitable for people without extensive knowledge of computing.