Install the three things, and prove each one works

Three pieces of software, and a check for each. Do the checks — "it seemed to install" is how people lose an evening later.

1. An editor

Visual Studio Code, free, from code.visualstudio.com. It is where you will read and write files.

Check: open it, create a file called hello.txt, type anything, save it. If you can find that file on your desktop afterwards, the editor works and you know where it puts things — which matters more than it sounds.

2. Node.js

This is the thing that runs JavaScript outside a browser. Get the LTS version from nodejs.org — LTS means long-term support, the boring one, which is what you want.

Check: open a terminal (next lesson explains what that is; for now, in VS Code use Terminal → New Terminal) and type:

node --version

A version number means it works. command not found means it did not — usually because the terminal was open before you installed. Close it, open a new one, try again. That single fix solves this problem most of the time.

3. Git

From git-scm.com. It records the history of your files, and lesson 3 is about why that matters.

Check: git --version in the terminal.

The habit worth forming today

You just ran two commands to confirm two installs. That is the shape of everything that follows: do a thing, then check the thing, with a command that answers rather than a feeling that it probably worked.

Almost every "it's broken and I don't know why" in this track is a check somebody skipped.

When a check fails

Read the message. Actually read it — beginners' eyes slide off error text, and it is usually the most informative sentence on the screen. Then paste it into a search engine, or into an assistant, verbatim. Someone has had it before.

Try it now

Run all three checks and write the three version numbers in a file called SETUP.md. When something breaks in two months, knowing which versions you had is the difference between a five-minute fix and an afternoon.