Minimal Programming Kit

Hello coders,

This page aims to help beginners to set up their PC for programming. All recommended tools are free, stable, and widely used even by experienced programmers and designers. In the end, we will build a popular open-source project using the downloaded tools.

Thanks for reading! - Content provided by App Generator.

The Short-list

• A modern editor - VSCode
• Nodejs - used in Javascript-based products and tools
• Python - a modern script language used for many types of projects
• GIT - a command-line tool used to download sources from Github

VSCode

We need this software to visualize and edit the sources, execute our projects and investigate the issues that might occur during the programming process.

• VSCode - official website
• VSCode - download page

NodeJS

Installing NodeJS unlocks access to a huge ecosystem that exposes
many tools and libraries we can use in our projects:

• For coding web pages: React, Vue, Svelte
• Backend: Express, Fastify, Koa
• Tools: Gulp, Webpack

To get started with NodeJS please access the official website and download a version compatible with your operating system

• NodeJS - official website
• NodeJS - download page

Python

Python is a general-purpose coding languagewhich means that, unlike HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, it can be used for other types of programming and software development besides web development. Python is interpreted, easy to learn surrounded by a huge ecosystem, actively supported and used in many industries and domains. Can be used for things like (starting from the simple ones):

• Basic programming: using strings, adding numbers, open files
• Writing system scripts (creating instructions that tell a computer system to do something)
• Back end (or server-side) web and mobile app development
• Desktop apps and software development
• Processing big data and performing mathematical computations

Python can be downloaded from the official website. Choose the installer for your operating system, download, and click a few times.

$ python --versionPython 3.7.2 <-- All Good

GIT

Git is a free and open-source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. Using GIT we can clone/download and manage projects from Github and BitBucket with ease.

• GIT - official website
• GIT - download page

To check the installation, feel free to open a terminal and type git --version:

git --versiongit version 2.28.0.windows.1 <-- All Good

Build a Sample Project

To make this short tutorial useful, we will build in the local environment a popular open-source project from Creative-Tim: Material Kit (free version) with a few commands typed in the terminal. Material Kit is a Free Bootstrap 4 UI Kit with a fresh, new design inspired by Google's material design.

• Material Kit - product page
• Material Kit - LIVE Demo

To build locally this amazing product, we will follow up a simple setup: clone the sources from the public repository (Github), install modules, and start the template. Let's go!

Step #1 - Clone the sources

$ git clone https://github.com/creativetimofficial/material-kit.git$ cd material-kit

Step #2 - Install project dependencies (this might take a while)

$ npm install

Step #3 - Start the project

$ npm run start

If all goes well, we should see Material Kit starter running in the browser:

Thanks for reading! For more resources, please access:

• Free React Dashboards - a curated list published here on Dev.to
• Open-source Dashboards provided by AppSeed