The only thing you really need to dominate on the internet is a computer that’s hooked up to the internet, plus willpower to not look at porn, youtube and reddit all day (beat) and actually learn to code. Your operating system doesn’t matter, unless you want to build an iphone app, then you need Mac OSX. You can develop for Android on OSX, windows or Linux, one of the many reasons it’s kicking the iphones ass. Apple fanboys, post bitchy comments below.
Moral of the story, who gives a shit if you're a mac, PC, or really sexy and use Linux, just start building something.
But, let’s go over a few things. Number one, all browsers are not created equal. If you are watching this lesson on Internet Explorer, stop everything and download firefox or chrome. Remember, friends don’t let friends use Internet Explorer.
Chrome is fast, and has great developer tools plus lots of awesome add ons to help you out. Firefox is great for the same reasons.
Open chrome and inspect a page, with developer tools the front end code that is creating the page is visible. We see the HTML and the CSS making it sexy, like all this (gesture). We can even change things in real time. It’s like x-ray vision for the web. Bet you wish it worked on me too? You can even copy and paste code, like Picasso and Steve Jobs said, good artists copy, great artists steal. Just don’t be a dick about it. Think more like reading other peoples code is a great way to learn.
Next, you can’t write code with Word processors. You need a text editor. For PC, Sublime or notepad++, if you are on mac there are a few more good ones, Sublime again, texmate, MacVim and others. Sublime is the new hotness in the developer community and you won’t go wrong with it. When programming you’ll spend most of your time thinking, not writing code, so just pick a damn text editor and get on with it.
Then we need two more things, a way to run it on your computer, known as local development and a way to get it up to wherever you get some server hosting.
To run your code locally, just means running it on your computer. To set this up you can download WAMP for windows or MAMP for mac. The AMP stands for Apache, mySQL and PHP. These programs set up the server stack on your computer, then you put your code in the correct directory and your computer acts as the server. Now your site runs without being connected to the internet and you can test stuff before moving it to your live site.
To move your code use an FTP program, we recommend CyberDuck, which works on Mac and PC. This program gives you an interface to move files to your server. We’ll talk about where to get your domain name and server next. Stick around.
Questions or Comments?