Exercise 0: The Setup

You are going to need to set up and configure some tools to do this book. Chances are that you may already have many of these, but let's just make sure.

A Programmer's Editor

You need a programmer's text editor, not an IDE. Vim, Emacs, and Atom are all programmer's text editors. They're not simplistic text editors that can only do text, but instead are designed for you to manage whole projects and work with lots of programming files at once. They also have common features found in IDEs like running build commands, scripting, and others, but there's one key difference. An IDE is typically tied to one single language because it does advanced introspection on the source and provides you with shortcuts to write the code. You then don't have to remember anything and can just ctrl-space your way through most any project. This is awesome when you have 100 other 10x developers who are writing more technical debt than you can handle, but it's a terrible feature when you're trying to learn. The other problem is you have to wait around for someone to write you an IDE for any new languages, so if Microsoft or JetBrains don't like a language then you are stuck.

Everything you can do with an IDE you can also do with a real programmer's text editor, and since editors like Vim, Emacs, and Atom are scriptable and modifiable they are future proof. If Haskell++ becomes the next hotness, you can work with it now and all your past projects at the same time. If you become dependant on an IDE, then you've got to wait for someone else to figure out the language for you.

If you are just starting out and want to get a decent programmer's editor that is free, then you should get Atom or VisualStudio Code. These editors run on every platform I use in the book, are scriptable, have many plugins, and are easy to use. You can also Vim or Emacs if you want.