Getting Started

Contributors: Conner Swenberg, Alanna Zhou

1. Read Course Information Pages

IntroductionFA25 Syllabus

2. Apply to the course

Apply to Take the Course

3. Enroll on Student Center

Like all other courses, you must enroll yourself on Student Center before the add deadline. For your convenience, our course code is 10764. This is not the permission number--this is just the code you use to find our course on Student Center.

4. Add Ed Discussion

We use Ed to manage classroom communications and answering student questions. The course Ed discussion is linked on the left sidebar underneath Getting Started.

Join the Ed here: https://edstem.org/us/join/FnU5t9

Even if you do not anticipate asking questions, Ed will be the main method of communication between students and course staff, so take advantage of it!

5. Install & Get Acquainted with Recommended Tools

Completing assignments will rely heavily on three tools: Python, a text editor, Postman, and the command line.

Install Python

Before you do anything, make sure that you have Python 3.9.12 installed. The reason is that our course runs testing scripts that use 3.9+ features.

Download PythonPython.org

Check your Python versions to make sure you'll be using the right one. Notice that if you have both Python2 and Python3, you may have to use python3 when you're running it as a command so that your computer knows only to use version 3.

$ python --version
Python 2.7.15

$ python -V
Python 2.7.15

$ python3 --version
Python 3.9.12

$ python3 -V
Python 3.9.12

Install a Text Editor

https://code.visualstudio.com/downloadcode.visualstudio.com

Install Postman

Postman

Know Command Line Basics

Command Line

6. Prepare for Chapter 1

Our first lecture will introduce you to how computers communicate over the web and our demo will introduce you to the Flask python package which we will use throughout the course. We recommend watching a previous semester's lecture recording or reading the textbook chapter before coming to lecture.

1. Routes