Required Software

Before getting started, let's make sure you have all the needed software installed. They are:

• A Command-Line Interface (CLI) like Terminal or GitBash .
• Python (be sure it is version 3.7 or later)
• pip
• A code editor
• A web browser

(If you're totally confident you already have all of these things, feel free to skip the rest of this page and head straight to the next lesson!)

Command-Line Interface (CLI)

For this course, you'll need to have a Command-Line Interface (CLI) —such as terminal (on MacOS) or GitBash (on Windows)—and you'll need to know how to use it. If you've been coding for a little while, you probably already have a CLI set up and know at least some basic commands (like cd , pwd , ls , etc.). But if you have no idea what we're talking about, or you just feel a bit fuzzy on the details, we strongly recommend that you go through the first part of our free course, Shell Workshop . This course shows you how to install a CLI (if you don't already have one) and also walks through the basic commands that any developer should know.

Note that if you're on a Mac, you'll already have the default CLI, called Terminal . That will work fine for this course, but you can download an alternative CLI if you find that you want different features. Personally, I prefer ITerm2 .

If you're on Windows, you'll have the Command Prompt pre-installed, but this will not have the functionality you need—so you'll have to install an alternative, such as GitBash . Again, you can check out the Shell Workshop course for details on how to install and use GitBash.

Python 3 and pip

Python 3.7 or later

You'll want to be sure that you have Python 3.7 or later installed. If you're not sure whether Python is installed, or you're not sure what version of Python you have, you can find out by going to your command line and running:

 python --version

Or:

python3 --version

If you need to install (or update) Python, you can get the latest version here .

pip / pip3

pip is the package manager for Python, and we'll be using it to install packages that we need from the Python Package Index (a.k.a. PyPI ). If you have Python installed, then there's a good chance you already have some version of pip installed along with it. You can check by running this in the command line:

pip --version

And also:

pip3 --version

If you don't have pip installed, you'll get a command not found message. If you do have pip, you should get a result something like this:

pip 19.2.3 from /Users/jsmith/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pip (python 3.7)

This shows both which version of pip you have (in this case , version 19.2.3 ) as well as which version of Python it is connected to (in this case, python 3.7 ).

If you don't have pip installed with your most recent Python version, then go here for instructions on how to install or upgrade.

Note: Be aware that it's possible to have both Python 2 and Python 3 installed on the same computer, and similarly possible to have multiple installations of pip. This can cause confusion, if you're not sure which version you're using. So this is why it's good to check the version, as shown above. You'll want to be sure you can use pip to install packages with your Python 3.7+ installation.

Code Editor

You probably already have a code editor installed on your computer; if not, you'll need to get one now in order to follow along with us for the rest of this course. I prefer Visual Studio Code (VS Code) . Other editors like Sublime and Atom or plain old Vim are also popular, awesome choices.

Web Browser

Finally, you will of course need a Web Browser, such as Chrome or Firefox for previewing the web pages you work with in the class. I prefer Firefox (as well as the DuckDuckGo search engine for looking things up, for that matter).