Editing text: Take your pick!

You’re going to need a text editor to write your code in, and Microsoft Word isn’t going to cut it. Each of the following is available for every operating system.

  • Atom is everyone’s favorite text editor. People will think you’re cool if you use Atom, and it has a wonderful plugin ecosystem. I find it h-o-r-r-i-b-l-y s-l-o-w.
  • Sublime Text is another popular one. The default download is Sublime Text 3, which is still in beta, but Sublime Text 2 is also available and is probably exactly the same for our purposes. It will ask you to buy it every now and again, though.
  • Visual Studio Code is put out by Microsoft, and is apparently really good. I haven’t used it.

If you’re using something else (like TextWrangler) that’s totally fine, too.

Communications: Slack

We’re going to be communicating using Slack, which is basically a fancy chat room. And by “communicating” I mean we are going to use Slack for literally (and figuratively) everything, every single second of our lives.”

  • Sharing files in class? Slack.
  • Sharing links in class? Slack.
  • Homework question? Slack.
  • Did I screw something up? I’ll let you know in Slack!

You’ll probably want to download it on both your computer and your phone, and make sure notifications are on.

You can register at isdata2017.slack.com using your Columbia email address. There’s a link to click down at the bottom of the page.

Screen Sharing: join.me

Two heads are better than one, even if they’re not around: we’ll use join.me for screen sharing.

You don’t need to download anything for this one, but now you know it’s an option.

Intense Geographic Stuff: QGIS

QGIS is Geographic Information Systems, a.k.a. working with map data. You won’t need it for most of your geographic work, but when you’re pushing boundaries it’s going to be the most helpful tool in your kit.

It used to be a trainwreck to install, but it seems to have gotten a bit better.