Editor

When you're writing code, it's nice to have a text editor that is optimized for writing code, with features like automatic color-coding of key words.

The Bash Shell

Bash is a commonly-used shell. Using a shell gives you more power to do more tasks more quickly with your computer.

Python

Python is becoming very popular in scientific computing, and it's a great language for teaching general programming concepts due to its easy-to-read syntax. While the 2.7 branch is commonly used, we are officially migrating to the 3.6 branch. All of the packages crucial for our purposes have been migrated. Installing all the scientific packages for Python individually can be a bit difficult, so we recommend an all in one installer. One of the best is Anaconda by Continuum Analytics.

Jupyter Notebook

The Jupyter Notebook is a web-based interface for interactive computing. The Jupyter Notebook has support for over 40 programming languages, including those popular in Data Science such R, Julia, Scala - and most importantly, Python. Individual notebooks are composable, executable, and sharable documents that mix text, code, data, and visualizations. The Jupyter Notebook comes pre-loaded on many all-in-one python installers like Anaconda.

SQL

SQL is a specialized programming language used with databases. SQL is a declarative langauge for describing (declaring) the data you want from the database. We use a firefox plugin called SQLite Manager, for the lessons.

We also recommend installing SQLite Studio as well. There are often memory allocation limits built into most web browsers which can make imporing large amount of data into a SQLite database challenging. SQLite Studio does not have this problem. It is also a relatively small application with a very intutitive GUI.

Python

• Download and install Anaconda. Very specifically download the graphical installer for the 3.6 version
• Use all of the defaults for installation except make sure to check Make Anaconda the default Python.

Editor

Notepad++ is a popular free code editor for Windows. (NOTE: Be aware that you must add its installation directory to your system path in order to launch it from the command line or have other tools like Git launch it for you. Please ask a TA to help you with this if you are interested.)

SQLite Studio

Download SQLite Studio to your desktop and follow the directions for installation.

Bash Shell on Windows

• Windows 10 - Please go to the following website which has great instructions for installing the Bash Shell for Windows.
• Windows 8 and earlier - Please go to the following website and follow the instructions for installing Cygwin a Unix like environment that will give you access to Bash. The installation is slightly more involved. If you find yourself having trouble insalling it, we will take care of it on the first say of camp.

Firefox SQLite Plugin

Please download the SQLite manager plugin for Firefox. To install it:

• Start Firefox.
• Go to the plugin homepage.
• Click the "Add Now" button.
• Click "Install Now" on the dialog that appears after the download completes.
• Restart Firefox when prompted.
• Depending on Firefox version, either 1) Select "SQLite Manager" from the "Tools" menu or 2) Go to "customize" in main menu and drag SQLite into the menu.

Python

• Download and install Anaconda. Very specifically download the graphical installer for the 3.6 version.
• Use all of the defaults for installation except make sure to check Make Anaconda the default Python.

Editor

We recommend Sublime Text. In a pinch, you can use nano or vi, which should be pre-installed.

SQLite Studio

Download SQLite Studio to your desktop and follow the directions for installation.

Firefox SQLite Plugin

Instead of using sqlite3 from the command line, we will use this plugin for Firefox instead. To install it:

• Start Firefox.
• Go to the plugin homepage.
• Click the "Add Now" button.
• Click "Install Now" on the dialog that appears after the download completes.
• Restart Firefox when prompted.
• Depending on Firefox version, either 1) Select "SQLite Manager" from the "Tools" menu or 2) Go to "customize" in main menu and drag SQLite into the menu.