Introduction
Before you begin, take 5 minutes to read this story about the single most valuable skill you can learn in the 21st century: https://www.learnenough.com/story
Technical sophistication is the single most valuable skill you can learn in the 21st century.
Here's an excerpt from the article:
It made me realize that, as important as programming is, it’s only one part of the much more general and powerful idea of technical sophistication, the combination of hard and soft skills that gives you the seemingly magical ability to solve any technical problem. Technical sophistication includes concrete skills like command lines, text editors, and coding, as well as fuzzier skills like Googling the error message and knowing when to just reboot the darn thing.
It’s more than "learning to code" — it’s learning to tech, so to speak, which is a much more general and powerful skill than coding alone.
Background Reading
Building on the previous article about technical sophistication, please familiarize yourself with these 3 tools: the command line, the text editor and version control.
Read Chapter 1 of these 3 tutorials:
You don't need to remember every single detail in those articles, the point here is to give a high-level overview of the tools we are using and why we are using them.
Tools
- Install Sublime Text 3 by following the instructions in Chapter 2 of Learn Enough Text Editor
- If you're on Windows 10, enable Bash: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-install-bash-shell-command-line-windows-10 before continuing.
- Now install git (just git, don't install gitk): https://scottiestech.info/2016/08/14/how-to-install-git-and-gitk-on-bash-on-ubuntu-on-windows-10/
Troubleshooting
If you ever get stuck or run into an error message at any point in this page or the next few pages, the first thing you should do is Google. Here's a good quote from Box 5 of the Learn Enough Command Line tutorial:
In technology, a similar skill (or, more accurately, set of skills) exists in the form of technical sophistication. In addition to “hard skills” like familiarity with text editors and the Unix command line, technical sophistication includes “soft skills” like looking for promising menu items and knowing the kinds of search terms to drop into Google, along with an _attitude _of doing what it takes to make the machine do our bidding.
If you're still having trouble after Googling and working on it for awhile, create a New Issue at https://github.com/UBCEnvision/UBCEnvision.github.io/issues and our team will try to help! Describe the problem you're having and what you did to try and solve it.