Workspaces - Newbie Question

Hi Karl, since you are using Teamtreehouse to learn, there is a tool offered to all students. It is called workspaces and you have been using it. You can use it for small applications and the way you do that is you go to the sidebar on the left and click on the bottom most option BEFORE the settings and support options. Then you click "new workspace" and you will have a bunch of different options like the name. You can just make that whatever you want. Then you'll have two other options, the environment and the template. For the environment, it depends on what you are using. If you are building a Ruby app, you will want to choose Ruby or whatever you are working on. If you choose something like Ruby or Node JS, Workspaces will choose a template for you. If you are new and learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and want to practice with a simple site, then I suggest using a Front End Environment with a blank template, or you can use a Frontend Boilerplate if you want to , but if you are a beginner, some of that may seem like gibberish. Once you start building bigger, more complex apps, you are going to want a text editor or and IDE. I personally use Github Atom but other popular options are: Sublime Text, Brackets, Textmate, Vim(not for beginners!), and Notepad++(only for windows). Also, keep in mind that some of these have a slight bit of a learning curve. For example, Sublime Text's user preferences are in a JSON file compared to Atom which uses a GUI. After you have that, you are also going to need to go through configuration of your local machine of Ruby, Rails, Node JS, etc. This is an extremely important part of the process but as a beginner, you can get by with using Workspaces. However, there are an enormous amount of videos, blog posts and other things that will help get you on the right track when you get there. Even Teamtreehouse has a helpful blog on all of this that covers many configuration topics. Hope this helped, I know it was alot!

Karl,

There are many options when it comes to choosing what program to use to write your code, but the important thing to remember is that, in the end, it's all about personal preference! All you absolutely NEED to write the code to build websites is a plain old text editor, like the one that comes installed on your computer (Notepad on Windows, TextEdit on Mac, etc.). You simply need to be able to write text and save files with your desired extension (.html, .css, .js, etc.) and you're good to go!

There are plenty of fancier options on the market (here is a list of 11 great text editors), some free and some paid, but they are not necessary. They can make some aspects of coding easier, like having plugins available, syntax highlighting, autoformatting, etc., but it's all up to you and what you find comfortable. You don't need to upgrade to anything fancy, you can use Notepad or TextEdit forever if you so choose!

Happy coding!

Erik

Hi Erik!

That list of text editors was brilliant! Just what I needed! I really appreciate the heads up!

Thank you my friend!