Welcome to Flatiron School! We're thrilled that you've joined our community of learners! In this lesson, we want to talk about the Learn platform and philosophy.
The Learn platform is designed for people who are passionate, curious, self-driven, and serious about learning.
We are comrades in a never-ending quest for knowledge. While there are no shortcuts, we believe that by providing knowledge in an optimized order, reinforcing knowledge with hands-on, feedback driven practice, and providing space for discussion, you will learn quickly. Learn is Flatiron School's framework for delivering that experience to you. Our goal is to provide the right materials, support and structure you need to discover your own love for the code.
This is the beginning of the Software Engineering immersive, where you will go through everything from the basics of coding to building full stack React web applications.
So, where do we start? How do we know what is necessary to understand first? In this course, we're going to start with a simple idea - programming is like having a conversation, and just like learning to talk, we need to start by learning a few words and practicing them.
Typically when learning to code, you have to first deal with configuring your computer, getting it set up to work with the programming language you're writing in. This is often referred to as setting up your environment. You will have to do this eventually, but for now, Learn will provide the environment you need to get started. Learn will give you a place to code. You get to focus on coding, not setup.
Many people on Learn have already spent some time dabbling with coding by using the amazing and plentiful resources all around the internet. In developing the content here on Learn, though, we make no assumptions. This prework content is designed for absolute beginners. Lessons build off each other, providing the tools and concepts necessary to complete future lessons.
What we don't do, however, is dumb anything down. We believe in your infinite capacity to learn. We do our best to offer a curriculum that is clear, digestible, engaging, challenging, and deep. The curriculum you'll encounter on Learn is rigorous and will demand that you be patient, resourceful, and gritty.
From the beginning, we'll make sure you have the support and tools you need; you just need to bring the grit.
We don't believe in learning alone. As you make progress, expect to bump into other learners just like you, ready and willing to help each other succeed. Together, we can go further than we could ever go alone. We expect everyone on Learn to be friendly, respectful, helpful, and nice. Learn is something special.
If you get stuck following the instructions, ask! If you get stuck getting a coding concept, ask! Instructors from the community will be glad to help. There is an 'Ask a Question' button in all lessons on Learn.co for this reason, and we'll talk a bit more about this soon. You can also see questions from other students who may be working on similar problems.
As mentioned previously, one of the time-consuming parts of getting started with programming is setting up your work environment. There's a lot room for error. Also, many computers need extra programs or setup to be used for coding. Many would-be developers have tossed their laptops out the window in frustration when trying to get their environment set up. They wrongly assumed that "If I can't set up the language, there's no way I can use the language." Nothing could be further from the truth!
Learn provides a solution for this so you can get to writing code faster: the
Learn in-browser IDE. The in-browser IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is
a fully functional text editor and command line interface, connected with your
GitHub account through Learn. It automates some steps for us and also comes with
some built in command line tools such as learn, used for running tests in
later lessons. If "command line" and "editor" are still new concepts to you,
don't worry, you'll be getting to know them soon enough.
To take a look now at the in-browser IDE, look for the 'Sandbox' button on the top right of this lesson on Learn.
The Sandbox acts as a scratch pad for practicing as you read lessons. The Sandbox will be available on every lesson in the first few sections of this course and on any lessons that do not specifically require a student to write code.
Any changes you make in the Sandbox will be saved from lesson to lesson,
including any files and folders you create. Learn automatically saves this
content on your behalf to a repository in your GitHub account called
learn-co-sandbox.
A word of caution! Please do not touch this repository in GitHub, as it will affect your Sandbox experience, and potentially cause your work to be out of sync.
In a few lessons, you will be introduced to concepts like navigating a command
line. Soon after, you'll be working with the Interactive Ruby Shell, otherwise
known as IRB, and read-evaluate-print loops, or REPLs. You can use the
Sandbox throughout these lessons to follow along. For example, if you open the
Sandbox now, in the bottom right section (the in-browser IDE's command-line
interface), you can type whoami and press Enter to see your Learn account
name:
Later on, you'll encounter lessons that require you to write your own code. In these lessons, the Sandbox button will change to Open IDE:
In these lessons, instead of a scratch pad, you'll be able to edit and work on lesson specific files.
You're just getting started, and we're happy you're here. To proceed to the next lesson, press the "I'm Done" button on the right side of this page, then click "Next Lesson".
Happy Learning!
React
Typescript
Django
Laravel
Facebook
Microsoft
Google
Alibaba
D3
Tencent