There’s lots of software to install, but this part is more busywork than hard work.

Slack, your chat software

Slack is a messaging app that helps teams manage communications. It’s an incredibly popular tool - even The New York Times uses it for their workflow (among other cool things).

Our Slack is located at https://ledeprogram.slack.com. Use your Columbia address to sign up and it’ll let you in automatically. We’re going to be using Slack a lot.

  • You can use it to get help from teaching assistants during class. You can get a TA’s attention by typing @theirname in a message, or you can send them a direct message.
  • It’s also useful to get help when you’re at home. Can’t find a file? Find a typo in some instructor code? Check with the Slack room!
  • Be sure to download the mobile app to get immediate notifications from instructors during the summer.
  • It can also be a little fun - use Slack to share interesting links, find folks who are interested in going to events with you, and just generally hang out.

When you sign in to Slack, you’ll automatically be signed in to several channels (a.k.a. chatrooms)

  • #general is for announcements by instructors
  • #foundations, #data-and-databases, #algorithms and the #studio-... channels are all course-specific channels
  • #social is for general chit-chat. Want to chat about the weather? Looking to put together a potluck? Try here!
  • #events can be used to keep a list of events that Lede might be interested in - meetups and more.
  • #jobs is for job postings you notice that folks might be interested in
  • #coding is for coding questions not related to classwork/homework, just to give them some breathing room.

You might want to check out Getting started for new users to learn the ins and outs of Slack.

PostgreSQL, your database server

PostgreSQL (or Postgres) is a kind of database. You’ll like it.

Installing on OS X

There are a few ways to install PostgreSQL on OS X, but we’re going to go with Postgres.app.

Whenever you want Postgres to be running, run the app.

To run the psql client which lets you ask the database for information, click the elephant in the menu bar (up top, right) and select Open psql.

Installing on Windows

Visit the downloads page on the PostgreSQL website, then download the version applicable to your computer (there’s a 99.9% chance it’s Windows x86-64). Run the installer.

After installation completes, it asks if you want to run “Stack Builder” - say yes!

In the Stack Builder, You’ll want to check the box for Spatial Extensions > PostGIS, the most recent version.

Complete the installation by clicking Next > and OK a lot.

To run the psql client which lets you ask the database for information, type psql into the search bar on the bottom of your screen and click the SQL Shell (psql) result.

A plain-text editor

One of the most important tools we’ll use is a “plain-text editor,” which means you write and edit text without fancy stuff like bolding or italics. Writing in plain text is a requirement for programming, and from crunching numbers with Python to hand-crafting web pages. You sure can’t do that in Microsoft Word!

Either of these will work. Everyone in the world loves Atom and Visual Studio Code, but I personally use Sublime Text because it doesn’t choke on large files. It’s no big deal which you pick!

IDEs

There are also more complicated pieces of software that can be used for writing code called IDEs, integrated development environments. They do a ton of extra stuff, but can be a little overwhelming and are usually more useful on large software projects with dozens or hundreds of files. We won’t ever go above a few files, so something like Atom works great for us. PyCharm is one for Python that some people like, but we won’t be using in class. Other popular ones are Eclipse and Visual Studio (not to be confused with Visual Studio Code).