What do you need to get started with javaScript and follow along with my articles?

1. A computer, this doesn’t have to be anything fast, super modern or specific. Just about anything that can run a modern web browser will do.

2. A text editor of some sort.

   • List of many editors many I have used
   • An excellent popular code editor of vscode
   • a new quick addition is to try the new vscode online editor at https://vscode.dev that you don’t need to install.
   • a powerful CLI based editor of VIM. Vim for Javascript

3. A web browser.

   • which web browser you use really don’t matter much for this use whatever fits you as long as it has the ability to show you the console & an inspector, both Firefox & Chrome are great at this. I normally use Firefox Developer Edition for a few extra nice tools it has but I will not be going into those at all.

that’s all you really need, fairly simple right?

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Some useful tools that you don’t need now but might want.

• setting up node guide for your machine can be found here: Node.js site is wonderful for getting up and running.

• Alternativly i like useing a tool called nvm short for Node Version Manager as this tool will allow you to easily change what version of node you are running. If you are new and want to just get stuff up and working this is not really going to be an issue but if you want to start working with other people’s code base on more complicated projects its likely you will need to run a specific version of node and npm (node package manager) and find that a tool like ’nvm’ is very much appreciated.

• A good terminal (any should work but below are some personal suggestions).

  • Mac: iTerm2
  • Windows: cmder or the included terminal program also works nicely.
  • Linux: Terminator
  • Any OS: wezterm – while nice its a bit harder for newbies to setup and configure

• A good programming font

  This should be a monospaced and Sans font with good character differences (l,i,1,| should be easy to tell apart). If you are using Windows you probably have ‘Consolas’ already installed and if you are using Mac you likely have ‘Menlo’ installed and both are good programming fonts.

you can preview many fonts on this page at programmingfonts.org or at nerdfonts.com where the nerd fonts come with some other common icons that are sometimes useful for terminal based applications like neovim.

Some good fonts I have seen are listed below for quick download.

• Menlo

• Fira – supports Font Ligatures

• Fura Powerline – Fira with powerline support

• ProFont for Powerline – Based on clasic Mac OS font

• Consolas

• DejaVu Sans Mono

• Source Code Pro

• Hack

• Ubuntu monospaced

• Inconsolata-g

• Droid Sans Mono ZeroMod

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