Introduction to IDEs
To be an effective programmer, you need to be familiar with the development environment that you are using to create software.
IDE Types
IDEs can be either:
- Cloud based: which runs completly on the internet and used through the browser.
- Local Machine based: which runs completly using software installed on your computer.
Here is a comparison between the two:
| Cloud | Local | |
|---|---|---|
| Internet connection | Required | Not required |
| Setup and software | Browser only and signing up to a service account | Specialzed software must be downloaded, configured, and installed |
| File storage and access | On cloud server and accessed from multiple devices without additional effort | On local machine only and must be transferred to be used on other machines |
| Flexibility | Can only used features provided by the cloud service but is interoperable | Features added by installing additional software and interoperability depends on the used software |
| Cost | Freemium business model (Pay for special features) | Most tools are open source (no cost) |
| Examples | replit, codeanywhere, jsfiddle | VS Code, Atom, Sublime, Visual Studio |
Tools Used in This Course
Cloud Based IDE (Replit)
What’s great about replit is that it makes running your programs and using git very easy. It is the perfect tool for teaching programming languages for newcomers. You will find most HowTo examples will refer to replit. However there are a few things you need to keep in mind:
- Replit allows you to build your programs for free if they are publically accessed. To create private repls, you need to get a paid subscription. I will not ask you to putchase a subscription. It is your choice if you do so if you find the platfor useful.
- When using using the free replit account, you cannot import private GitHub repositories. You can only work with public repositories. This will not fit with our assignment requirements. Therefore, I will recommend that you use the local development tools that I will suggest in the next section. Should you choose to purchase a paid subscription, then you can continue to use replit for your assignments.
Local Machine IDE
To setup your laptop with the necessary software for this course, please follow the instructions in the PySetup section.
Before you can learn Python in this couse, you need to have some knowledge about the following tools:
- VS Code: We will use it to write python code. Anything you do on replit you can also do on VS Code. You will find that VS Code is more flexible but will require that you spend some time setting up first. The following section will give you the basics on how to use VS Code to write your programs.
- The terminal: It is part of the operating system and some knowledge of it will be necessary to build and run your web applications for this course. The following section will introduce you to using the terminal for this course.