Command Line


  • If you have Windows 7 onwards, fire Powershell up.
  • If you have an older Windows OS, get Cygwin
If you have Windows 7 onwards, fire Powershell up.

Linux / MacOSX

You are all set, just open Terminal.


IDEs and Text Editors

IDE stands for "Integrated development environment". It includes an environment that included an editor,build tools, debugging. Some IDEs also come with code completion (type a built-in function and hit tab to complete the function with tips on what parameters it takes. Others also allow people to write custom plugins or extensions to make like easier like source control integration, additional syntax highlighting, and more.

Some recommended IDEs

If you don't want to go near IDEs and are happy with text editors and working in command line:

Source Control

What is it? And why do I need it?

Source control is pretty important nowadays from working on your own personal project to team-based projects to interacting with open-source projects. It's a necessary skill that all who writes code should know. It will solve a lot of headaches and at least certain doom (might be exaggerated, but it feels like that at the time) and knowing that you can revert changes, it's quite a life-saver.
If you know Git or Mercurial and want to know what the difference is between them, here's a handy reference page:

Recommended Distributed Version Control System


After downloading Git, go through their tutorial.
Other references:

Mercurial (hg)

After downloading Mercurial, go through Joel Spoelsky's friendly tutorial.
Other references:

Version Control System Hosts

Sign ups are free.
  • Bitbucket - host your git and/or mercurial projects
  • Github - host your git projects
  • Gitlab - offers free unlimited (private) repositories and unlimited collaborators.

HTML5 and CSS3

Where to begin...?

Check out material from previous Coding Grace Beginners and Intermedate HTML5/CSS3 workshops:-




Where to begin...?

Curious about all this talk about python and you want to try it out. You don't need to have programming knowledge to learn Python.
  1. Head over to and click on the yellow button to launch the interactive Python shell.
  2. Head to a Python meetups. Currently it's mostly in Dublin (I'm afraid, we hope to improve on this).
    • Python Ireland - a monthly meetup group in Dublin that on the 2nd Wednesday of each month.
    • PyLadies Dublin - a female-friendly monthly meetup group on 3rd Tuesday of each month.
    • PyCon Ireland - Annual Irish Python conference whichs includes talks, sprints, workshops. Beginners friendly, financial grants available through its diversity programme.

Useful tools and utilities:

  • Command Line - You will end up turning to command line in your terminal/console and knowing a few basic command lines is really handy knowledge. It's quick and saves time.
  • Source Control - This is pretty essential nowadays regardless if you are working on your own project, with small/huge teams.
  • pip and virtualenv


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