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Getting started

Tooling​

Essentials​

You should install the following before going any further:

  • Visual Studio Code (VSCode) for editing code. You can also use Cursor for an AI-enhanced experience—but I recommend learning fundamentals first, then using AI to accelerate what you could have written by hand, vs having it generate things you don't understand.

  • Git for source control. Git is a very powerful system, but the cheat sheet is all you really need to know.

  • Node.js for installing JavaScript packages. Click on the "Copy to clipboard" button, paste it into your terminal, and run it.

I will do some examples in VSCode in order to show you its features, but I personally use LazyVim as an editor. Vim allows you to manipulate text much more quickly, but it has a learning curve, so you shouldn't bother with it if you are newer to programming. If you are interested, start with the Vim for VSCode extension and add a keyboard shortcut to toggle Vim mode on/off; once you are using Vim mode 100% of the time, you can try to migrate to LazyVim.

Git extensions​

GitHub Desktop is a GUI Git client.

LazyGit is a Terminal GUI for Git.

Graphics​

  • SVGO for compressing SVG files

  • GIMP: free raster image editor

  • Inkscape free SVG editor

  • ImageOptim for compressing raster images

  • FFmpeg for audio/video manipulation (required to render Liqvid projects to static videos)

  • ImageMagick for (advanced) image manipulation