This book has specific content depending on your educational programme and operating system. Please select them in the bar above!

Using shortcuts

To give you a taste of what's to come, with VSCode focused, press !kbd[!ctrl+O] (note that it is the letter O not zero) and select a folder containing a project on your computer. If you do not have one, either create an empty folder or download one from the introduction course.

Programing is all about using the keyboard. While the mouse is useful most of the time when using a computer, this is not one of them. Every action that can be done using your mouse can also be done without lifting your fingers from the keyboard.

You may be tempted to click on the screen to move the caret (the vertical line where text appears), save your file or create a new file, and while this works, it is horribly inefficient compared to using shortcuts. In the beginning, you may not notice this but as you go through the semester it will become second nature to you.

!kbd[Ctrl] or !kbd[⌘]?

On Macs the !kbd[!win] key is replaced by !kbd[⌘] and is usually used instead of the !kbd[Ctrl] key. This guide tries to match the shortcuts to the OS you have selected in the top bar but may not alway be 100% accurate.

You can find most of the common shortcuts in our cheatsheet. Printing one for yourself and bringing it along in your backpack is a good way remind yourself of what you can do with the editor. You should also use this as a reference durign this tutorial, but don't worry if you don't understand what all shortcuts do yet.

[Task] Try writing some text on a new line. What happens if you press !kbd[!ctrl+X] without selecting any text?

[Solution] The entire line gets cut.