reading-notes

Class 02 - The Coder’s Computer

Choosing a text editor

When choosing a text editor for programming four important features are:

• code completion, where the editor will autocomplete and suggest things such as HTML tags while you type
• syntax highlighting to improve readability of code
• comfortable themes that don’t hurt the eyes
• customisable with extensions to suit your needs

Using the command line

Some common command line commands are:

• pwd, which stands for print working directory and tells you the current directory
• ls, which provides a list of files and directories located in the current directory
• cd or change directory which is used to navigate to a directory within the current one
• mkdir, to make a new directory where you located
• touch, used to make a new file

For example, the following sequence of commands will navigate to a directory called projects then create a new directory called new-project before creating a new file called newfile.md and finally navigating back to the previous directory and displaying the contents of the new-project directory.

            cd projects
            mkdir new-project
            touch new-project/newfile.md
            cd ..
            ls projects/new-project