Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
83 lines (58 loc) · 2.27 KB

getting_started.markdown

File metadata and controls

83 lines (58 loc) · 2.27 KB

getting started

Welcome to Cyber Wizard Institute!

Most days, we will have presentations covering important programming fundamentals. However, the bulk of the time is dedicated to open hacking and learning, with facilitators hovering around to help when you get stuck or if you have questions.

We are all learners and teachers, so it's good to talk to other students, team up, ask each other questions, and share!

We will have time at the end of each day for anyone who has anything to share to get up and share something they've learned.

project ideas

To get the most out of Cyber Wizard Institute, it helps to have some concrete project ideas. If you can't think of anything, here are some ideas to get you started:

  • personal blog
  • a web-based 2d game
  • automating mundane tasks
  • twitter or IRC bot to generate silly text
  • interactive art
  • generating music with algorithms
  • visualizations and info-graphics
  • virtual reality
  • image manipulation

If you need help about where to start with any of these ideas, ask a mentor for guidance!

homework

To get some programming practice, we recommend nodeschool.

However, don't feel as if you need to get through all the nodeschool levels or do them in order. If you get stuck for too long on a lesson, just skip it and move on.

It's good to have a concrete real-world project or two to supplement nodeschool.

configuring your system

To get the most out of Cyber Wizard Institute, you will need a computer running Mac OSX or Linux. If your computer runs Windows, we can help you install Linux.

system package manager

If you are on Mac OSX, you will need to install xcode, then you can install homebrew.

If you are on linux, you will most likely already have a package manager installed. You're already done!

system software

During the course, we are going to make heavy use of:

  • git
  • node.js
  • npm

In debian or ubuntu you can do:

$ sudo apt-get install git nodejs npm build-essential
$ sudo ln -s `which nodejs` /usr/share/local/bin

On Mac OSX you can do:

$ brew install git nodejs

For different lectures and projects you will need to install more software to follow along, but these should get you in a good state for the rest of the lessons.