Hi new student, welcome to Social Hackers Academy! In this document you'll find all the instructions you need in order to prepare yourself for your upcoming journey in Social Hackers Academy, and beyond!
We'll discuss the following points:
- How do I communicate with everybody? Using Slack as the main communication tool
- Where do I write my code? Inside a code editor called Visual Studio Code
- What's the way to submit my homework? Using a planning tool called Trello
- How do I put my code online? On software development platform called GitHub
Slack is an application that allows us to communicate with others through (video) chat. It's used in most tech companies and is really easy to use. In order for you to get familiar we're going to use it as well!
Please download the app for on your desktop:
And if you really can't go without your phone, you can also get it for mobile:
When it's all installed it's time to get into it! These are the first things to do:
- Add a (professional looking) profile picture
- Add a nice description about yourself
- Say hi to your classmates in the class channel
Done? This is optional, but for those who are curious:
Technically speaking, you can write code for the web in any application that allows you to write and save plain text files (such as Notepad or TextEdit). However a code editor is a tool specifically designed for editing code.
Depending on to the the programming language, the code editor highlights special keywords, give suggestions for some extent, adds automatic indentation and sometimes has an integrated command line interface (more on that in the next section) as well.
While your code editor does the basic job of allowing you to write code, it can always be improved to make our lives as programmers easier. In the following video you'll learn about the most useful code editor extensions you can install in order to make development a much richer experience:
Currently, Visual Studio Code is one of the top code editors on the market. As such, we have chosen it has our default code editor to use. We highly recommend you to use it as well:
We can always improve what we have, including our code editor! We can add plugins to make our programming life much easier. Please install the following plugins as well and see for yourself!
For more specific information on how to setup your editor:
Trello is a planning tool that allows you to make todo lists in order to organize and prioritize your projects. In HackYourFuture we'll use it to submit your homework for the first module.
- Register for an account
- Get access to the
Feedback Assignmentsboard, by asking Wouter - Create a card including a CodePen URL of your technical assignment
GitHub is a place where you can put your code online. Why? To safely store your code in case something bad happens to your computer (computer crash, virus, faulty files). You'll always be able to access this code from GitHub, using any other computer.
- Register for an account
- Put the URL for your account in the class channel
Let's make sure you have done everything necessary:
- Slack: downloaded, added profile and said hi
- Trello: registered and added a card with the CodePen URL in of your technical assignment
- Github: registered and put the URL of your account in the class channel
If the answer to this is 'no', don't panic. First try and see if you can find some information about the above tools yourself (hint: ask Google first). If that doesn't work, don't be shy to ask your classmates or anyone from HackYourFuture on what to do next.
Have you finished with everything? Be proud of yourself, as you have optimally prepared yourself with all the tools needed to make your coding adventure a success!
Now, what will you be learning? Find out by clicking here.