Remote Development Intro Chapter 2: Coding 101

It’s time to write some code. In this chapter we’re getting a taste of the coding workflow. Remote development is cool but it gets limited pretty quick if all you can do is work in a sandbox, which is not the goal of this series. But before getting to the meat of things we need to cover a few 101s.

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Goal

Make a change in your codespace, and save your work with a Git commit.

Chapter 2: Coding 101

1: Open your codespace

On the forked repository from Chapter 1, open or re-open your codespace.

2: Open the basics.py file under chapter2

Definitions:

• Comment: A line in code that is ignored by the computer, used to give the human reader more information (starts with # in Python)
• Variable: A named container that stores data (like numbers, text, etc.) for later use in the program
• STRING: A sequence of characters (text) enclosed in quotes (e.g., "Hello World")
• ARGUMENT: A value passed to a function when calling it (e.g., in print("Hi"), "Hi" is the argument)
• FUNCTION: A reusable block of code that performs a specific task (e.g., print displays output)

Read through all of the comments on the file and follow the instructions.

3. Commit and push your change

Definitions:

• Git: A distributed version control system for tracking changes in source code during software development.
• Version Control System: A tool that tracks changes in code, allowing collaboration and edit history preservation.

Git is a version control system that you will want to get familiar with. In this chapter, we're just going to run four basic commands to get a taste.

Run git status in your terminal to see which files have been changed and need to be committed.

Run git add src/chapter2/basics.py to stage your change. Staging a change is preparing it to be saved in your Git history.

Run git commit. In the window that pops up, name your commit something descriptive, such as "Added variable definitions and completed chapter 2 exercises". Then close the commit window.

Run git push to upload your committed changes to your forked repository on GitHub.

Done ✅

That’s it! You wrote some of your first lines of code, and saved your work using your version control system, Git. In the next chapter, we'll cover a few more coding concepts to close out the remote development intro.

Questions?

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