Okay, so before we can actually start writing the code for our application, we do need to install
a few things onto our computer.
Now you may already have some of these, but please take this as an opportunity to get the latest current,
stable version of whatever it is I'm demonstrating here.
So we do need the.
Net Software Developer Kit in order to build something with DotNet.
So please come to dotnet microsoft.com and go and download whatever the current version is of.
Net at the time of recording, it's Net nine and whatever they specify in the recommended option that's
available.
Please do go and grab that if you're from the future and it's Net ten as long as it's a stable and released
version, please download that as DotNet is a very mature framework now, and breaking changes in between
versions are not really a thing.
So the same code that I write using dotnet nine in this example will be valid for.
Net ten, 11 and 12, maybe 12, definitely net ten, probably net 11, maybe 12.
So just grab the stable latest current version available now.
We also need something to actually write the code in.
Thankfully, the days of writing in notepad or some text editor are long gone, and the tools that we
have available now are excellent.
The one that I'm going to demonstrate everything in is Visual Studio Code.
And the reason I use this, because I do often get asked like, why am I using Visual Studio Code?
Well, first of all, it's free of charge.
The second reason is cross-platform.
There's a version of this that's available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, and the experience is pretty
much identical.
And also it's simply the most popular IDE or code editor there is out there.
Over 70% of developers, according to a Stack Overflow survey, use Visual Studio Code on a daily basis,
so it wins on the popularity contest as well.
But this is your code that you're writing.
You may prefer to use something else.
If you're on windows, you might prefer to use the full version of Visual Studio.
We don't need to use that.
Even if you're on windows.
It's quite heavyweight for what we're doing on this course, but you can use Visual Studio, certainly
for the C-sharp development side of things.
When it comes onto the client side.
It's been some years since I've used Visual Studio.
Now I have no idea how it handles what we're going to be using for the client side with react and TypeScript
is probably fine.
I just can't say with any confidence because I haven't used it for a while.
I do know it's going to be excellent for C-sharp though, so it's up to you.
If you do want to use this, please feel free to do so if you do.
And another option which is now a good option is Ryder, because recently they updated their terms of
usage for this.
And now we can see that it's free for non-commercial use.
And participating in a training course to learn how to code is non-commercial use.
And you can now download and use this free of charge.
The products from JetBrains are typically superb.
I do use them a lot.
I use Ryder for C sharp code, and I use Webstorm for TypeScript or JavaScript based code, and I use
them a lot and they are excellent.
So now this is an option as well.
If you do want to use these tools then you can do so completely free of charge.
The only thing is if you take a look at their pricing options, then if you do want to use it for something
other than non-commercial use, then you would need a commercial license to do so.
So it's an option.
Another tool that we need to download and install is called postman, and we use this for testing our
API as we build it.
And there's a desktop app available for windows, Mac and Linux.
And if we click on one of these buttons, I'll just click on the Mac button, for instance.
This takes me to the correct download for this.
So please do download and install this.
We won't use it straight away.
And when we do, I'll demonstrate how we're going to use it when we get into it.
This is a real time saver when it comes to testing our work because as you can see in the background
here, we can create folders and pre-written requests that check our API functionality as we go along.
So please do make sure you get postman and install it.
As we build our application, we're going to reach certain milestones, and every time we reach a milestone,
we're going to commit and save our changes into source control.
This is going to act as a backup for our code.
It's going to act as version control for our code, so we can go back in time to an earlier version
of our code if we need to do so.
And if we do encounter some kind of disaster like hard drive failure, then even if we lose everything
from our hard drive, our code, if we use git and we store it in a public repository like GitHub,
which we are going to do, then we've got our code in a safe place outside of our hard drive.
So please go ahead and install git, because that is something that we need in order to achieve that.
It's the most popular source control system there is out there, so you may have this already.
If not, please download it for your operating system.
And another thing that we need to install this is more of a client side thing.
Well it is a client side thing.
We need to install Node.js.
And node is a JavaScript runtime environment so that when we do start building our client side app,
we have something that's capable of running and compiling the JavaScript that we're writing so that
we can check and test our code as we write it.
So please install Node.js.
But what I would really recommend doing, and I'll add a shorthand link to get to this is installing
node js with node version manager.
When it comes to installing node using this approach, then if we want to go for a newer version or
an older version of node, that means uninstalling one version of node, then installing a different
version of node.
So there are tools out there that allow us to manage multiple different versions of node on our computer.
And node version manager is the way to go about this.
So there's different options for different operating systems on this case.
And this particular article will walk you through installing it on Linux, on a mac and on windows as
well.
So I'd highly recommend doing that, although you don't have to.
You can just install node using this approach if you're okay with just having a single version and understanding
that changing versions means uninstalling reinstalling node, that's also an option, of course.
So please do download and install all of the different options that I've mentioned on here.
I'm not going to insult anyone's intelligence by demonstrating how to install software, and the documentation
for all of these is pretty straightforward.
Click on the thing, run the installer.
Great, you've got it installed.
So now that we have that available, the next thing we're going to take a look at is where you can find
the source code for this training course and where you can download the course assets that we need for
this training course as well.
And that's coming up next.