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?

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

• To use a lot of tools for javaScript you’ll need to run Node.js on your machine, I won’t be going into details here on how to get it up and running but the Node.js site is wonderful for getting up and running.

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

  • Mac: iTerm2
  • Windows: cmder
  • Linux: Terminator

• 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. Some good fonts I have seen are listed below.

  • 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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