Start Writing Software For Just $100
Do you want to learn to program? Yes. Do you have a laptop? No. Do you need a laptop? No, actually you don’t. All you need is a Chromebook, like this one that you can buy at Walmart for $107.99.
What is a Chromebook?
A Chromebook is like a laptop, but its main purpose is to start the Google Chrome web browser. This allows users to access the internet, but not much else. Turns out that’s all you need to get started.
Ok, I have a Chromebook. What next?
Just four more things…
Create a Digital Ocean Droplet
What is Digital Ocean? What is a Digital Ocean Droplet?
Digital Ocean is a company that lets you start a computer in a data center somewhere in the world. You can then connect to it and do whatever you want with it. In our case, we will write programs on it. A Digital Ocean Droplet is what this company calls the machines that users rent.
Why is this necessary?
You can’t write code on a Chromebook, but you can connect to a Digital Ocean Droplet and write code there.
Lets Create a Digital Ocean Droplet
Create a free account at https://www.digitalocean.com/. Create a new Droplet by navigating to the “Create” dropdown on the landing page:
We pick the “Ubuntu” machine and the cheapest plan:
There are a couple of other things on this page. Keep the default selections for all of them except “Authentication”. When you hit this section, select “Password” and follow the prompts:
You will use this password in order to connect to your Droplet so that you can write code.
Finally, click “Create Droplet” at the bottom of the page.
Wow, look! There’s your machine. Only 5 bucks a month and you can destroy it whenever you stop using it. Pretty cool…
Make note of your password and your Droplet’s IP address. In the above picture, the IP address is 157.230.238.138.
Add Secure Shell to Chrome
Add the Secure Shell extension to your Chrome browser. Launch it and fill in the prompt:
username = root, in the case of our Digital Ocean Droplet, a user named “root” will be allowed to connect to the Droplet if the right password is provided.
hostname = 157.230.238.138, this is the public IP of your Digital Ocean Droplet that you created earlier. You can find this IP in your Digital Ocean Droplet Dashboard.
port = 22, this is an implementation detail of ssh: a program that lets you connect to computers remotely.
Click [Enter Connect]
You will see the following message when connecting to this Droplet for the first time. Submit “yes”.
Next, you will be asked for the password that you created earlier.
All right, you did it. You’re in!
Write a Program
You will have to use the vim text editor in order to write anything. So, here’s a video on how to write code with vim.
If this is your first time writing code ever, you will probably want to set yourself off on a path towards eventually creating something interesting. Maybe you would like to do web application development or something web or data science or something AI related. For web development, you will need to learn JavaScript, HTML, CSS. If you want to do data science or AI things, you will need to learn Python.
Get Started With JavaScript
Run the following:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install nodejsDo this nodejs tutorial.
Get Started With Python
Run the following:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install pythonDo this python tutorial.
