Software Setup

In a nutshell:

This page describes how to set up a computer to code. While the focus is on robotics programming, the reader will find setups for other common programming languages as well, like Python and C++.

h2. Common Software

Programming effectively on all operating systems will require the following software:

1. A package manager.

   This is a tool designed to download other programs by name automatically, and to update them en masse if any of them have changes. It is an alternative to chasing down individual pieces of software and downloading their installers.

2. Source code editors.

   While it's technically possible to edit software using Notepad or TextEdit, that's not a good idea. Programming is not a trivial discipline, and keeping track of control structures, indentation, syntax errors, and line numbers ought to be a tool's job and not a human's.

3. Network tools.

   Is your computer online? Is the FRC robot reachable? Why is this upload so slow? Tools exist that professional developers use to answer those questions, and we can use them too.

4. Terminals and shells.

   A shell is a program that sits around and does absolutely nothing except to wait for user input to execute. While the shells you're probably thinking of are text shells (C:\> with a blinking cursor), graphical shells exist too, and you are probably using one right now: Windows Explorer or MacOS's Finder.

   A terminal is a window that displays lines of text -- usually shells. A good terminal will be able to run multiple shells at once, control their look and feel, and handle keyboard input in a flexible way.

5. Compilers and interpreters.

   The only language that computers understand is assembled machine code -- low-level binary opcodes, 1s and 0s. That is why programming languages exist: source code is for humans. We write the source code in a source code editor, and either an interpreter reads that code directly and then runs it or a compiler converts it to machine code first. Either way, code isn't code until something on your computer reads it.

h3. Setup for Microsoft Windows

h3. Setup for MacOS

h3. Setup for Ubuntu Linux