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Version: 2024

Local Machine Setup

For this course, you will need a Mac or Ubuntu (GNU/Linux) machine.

note

If you are using Windows, you can run Ubuntu inside Windows thanks to WSL.

Package Manager​

First, let's get a package manager to help install the software that will be needed.

macOS doesn't come with a package manager by default, so we will install Homebrew.

Open a terminal and run the following command:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Once Homebrew is installed, you can install software by running:

brew install <package-name>

Shell​

A shell is a program that takes commands from the keyboard and gives them to the operating system to perform. In the old days, it was the only user interface available on a Unix-like system such as Linux. Nowadays, we have graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in addition to command line interfaces (CLIs) such as the shell.

To open a shell, you can use the following keyboard shortcut:

  • Mac: Cmd + Space and type Terminal
  • Linux: Ctrl + Alt + T

BASH​

bash is a Unix shell and command language written by Brian Fox for the GNU Project as a free software replacement for the Bourne shell. First released in 1989, it has been used widely as the default login shell for most Linux distributions and Apple's macOS Mojave and earlier versions.

We will not go into the details of bash here, but you can find more information on the Wikipedia page.

While we will not be using bash as our default shell, it is still a good idea to know how to use it. Furthermore, many of the commands we will be using in this course are written for bash.

ZSH​

zsh is a Unix shell that can be used as an interactive login shell and as a command interpreter for shell scripting. Zsh is an extended Bourne shell with a large number of improvements, including some features of Bash, ksh, and tcsh.

We will be using zsh as our default shell in this course.

Install​

brew install zsh

Set as default shell​

Set zsh as default shell:

chsh -s $(which zsh)

Oh-My-Zsh​

Oh-My-Zsh is an open source, community-driven framework for managing your zsh configuration (and it comes with a bunch of plugins and themes).

Install​
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

.zshrc​

The .zshrc file is a script that is executed each time a new zsh shell is started. It is located in your home directory (~/.zshrc).

You can edit the .zshrc file with your favorite text editor.

We will be adding some configuration to the .zshrc file in the next sections.

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.

A version control system (VCS) allows you to track the history of a collection of files. It supports creating different versions of this collection. Each version captures a snapshot of the files at a certain point in time and the VCS allows you to switch between these versions.

Check out the Git documentation for more information.

To check if you have Git installed, open a shell and run the following command:

git --version
note

If you don't have Git installed, you can install it with your package manager

Visual Studio Code​

Visual Studio Code is a free source-code editor made by Microsoft for Windows, Linux and macOS. Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, code refactoring, and embedded Git.

We will be using Visual Studio Code as our code editor.

To install it, run:

brew install --cask visual-studio-code

It is a good idea to install the following extensions for Visual Studio Code. These extensions will make your life easier when working on the assignments.

Extensions​

Open Visual Studio Code and click on the Extensions icon in the sidebar.

Live Share​

This extension allows you to share your code with others and collaborate in real time.

Remote Dev​

This extension allows you to develop inside a container, on a remote machine, or in the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

Python​

This extension adds support for Python to Visual Studio Code.

Jupyter​

This extension adds support for Jupyter notebooks to Visual Studio Code.

Python​

Python is an interpreted, high-level and general-purpose programming language. Python's design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant indentation. Python is a popular programming language that is used for many different things: from web development to data science.

We will be using it as the main programming language.

Python 3 is the latest version of Python. It should be installed by default on macOS and Ubuntu.

To check if you have Python 3 installed, run:

python3 --version

Pip​

Pip is the package manager for Python.

To check if you have Pip installed, run:

pip3 --version

If you don't have Pip installed, you can install it by running:

brew install pip

Virtual Environments​

To avoid conflicts between different Python projects, it is a good idea to use virtual environments. A virtual environment is a directory tree which contains Python executable files and other files which indicate that it is a virtual environment.

Install​

Let's install the virtualenv package and virtualenvwrapper extension for Python.

pip3 install --user virtualenv virtualenvwrapper

.zshrc​

We will be adding some configuration to the .zshrc file.

Open the .zshrc file with your favorite text editor and add the following lines:

# Python
export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3
source virtualenvwrapper.sh

Jupyter​

Jupyter Notebook is an open-source web application that allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations and narrative text.

We will be using Jupyter Notebook to write some assignments.

Install​

pip3 install jupyter