Welcome to the AI Coding Workshops! We are so excited you're here. This first lesson will walk you through getting your computer set up with all the tools you'll need for this program.
What is an IDE?
IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment. It's a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. Think of it as your digital workshop, where you have all your tools in one place: a code editor, a terminal, debugging tools, and more.
For this program, our IDE will be Visual Studio Code (VS Code), a popular, free, and powerful code editor from Microsoft.
✅ Step 1: Install VS Code
If you don't already have it, the first step is to download and install VS Code.
1.Go to the official VS Code download page: https://code.visualstudio.com/download
2.Download the installer for your operating system (macOS, Windows, or Linux).
3.Run the installer and follow the on-screen instructions.
Once it's installed, open VS Code. You should see a welcome screen.
✅ Step 2: Set Up Codex in VS Code
Our AI pair programmer for this program is Codex, an AI coding agent from OpenAI. Codex lives inside VS Code as an extension, allowing you to have a conversation with it, ask it to write code, and have it edit your files directly.
1.Open the Extensions View: In VS Code, look at the left-hand sidebar. Click on the icon that looks like four squares; this is the Extensions view.
2.Search for Codex: In the search bar at the top of the Extensions view, type "Codex" and press Enter.
3.Install the Extension: Find the official "OpenAI Codex" extension in the search results and click the "Install" button.
4.Sign In: After the extension is installed, you will need to sign in with the OpenAI account credentials that were sent to you via email. Follow the prompts to authorize the extension.
Once you're signed in, you should be able to open the Codex panel from the sidebar. Try it out! Open the panel and say "Hello!"
✅ Step 3: The Integrated Terminal
VS Code has a built-in terminal, which is where we'll run commands to install software, run our app, and use Git. You don't need a separate terminal application.
To open the integrated terminal, you can either:
- Go to the top menu and select Terminal > New Terminal.
- Use the keyboard shortcut: ` (the backtick key) with Ctrl (Windows/Linux) or Control (macOS).
You should see a command prompt appear at the bottom of your VS Code window. This is where you'll run all your commands for the rest of this program.
And that's it! Your IDE is now set up and ready to go. In the next lesson, we'll dive into how to actually use Codex to write and understand code.
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