Required Course Tools - 5364

Created Monday 10 January 2022


You will absolutely need:


Text Editor


Any of the following are fine.

GOOD


Probably built in to your machine, the following are fine:
Gedit for Linux
Notepad for Windows
Notepad for Macs


Cross-Platform:
ScITE / Scintilla
jEdit - this is the one I will likely use the most; cross platform and runs on everything.

Linux (Graphical User Interface)
Leafpad
Gedit
Geany

Linux (Command Line)
nano
vi/vim
emacs

Windows
notepad++

Mac (wow, it was hard finding free ones, though I guess I shouldn't be surprised)
TextWrangler (I think)

Full "IDES" are fine too, e.g.

Atom
Sublime Text
VS Code


BAD

These are OBJECTIVELY the wrong tool for this job. They will almost certainly break and screw up your code because they're not at all designed for this. Don't even think about using them for this class. Seriously. Do. Not.

Microsoft Word
Wordpad
LibreOffice




Terminal Emulator/ Shell


You will be required to do a virtual Linux install (or simply buy a Raspberry Pi and use its default OS) One necessary tool here will be a Shell program.

Linux and Mac users have these built in.

Windows users have a slightly confusing range of issues to deal with, since most of the web is a "Unix/Linux/*nix" type of environment, and Microsoft was ill-prepared for the internet generally. Very very recently, Windows has added the use of GNU and Linux shell tools (with the nearly exactly backwards named "Windows Subsystem for Linux," so you may want to check that out. (Embrace, extend, extinguish?)

PuTTY (and PSCP/PSFTP) is a good choice for basic command-line work,
Cygwin is another interesting option for users who want a more complete option.

Tech Resources:Using Linux