Installation Guide

The following is a short installation guide for this course. I will generally be assuming access to a unix-style command line.

Note. In the long run, if you are a Windows user, I recommend setting up a WSL environment. This give you a Linux subsystem which will make other CS courses go a lot smoother (in my opinion). If you want something a little simpler, you can set up the Git Bash emulator, which should be sufficient for this course. Follow the instructions at either one of those links.

If you don't do either of these things (e.g., if you want to work directly in PowerShell) then we cannot guarantee we'll able to troubleshoot any issues you might run into.

Setting Things Up

Install the latest release of python from https://www.python.org. Follow the "Downloads" tab to an installer for your operating system. After doing this, you should open up a terminal and run the command
```
python3
```
in on the command line to open in interactive Python REPL (Read-Eval-Print-Loop) to verify that everything was set up correctly. You can then type CTL-D to exit the REPL.
The above installation includes a program called `pip3`, which is a package manager for Python. run the following command:
```
pip3 install sympy numpy scipy matplotlib networkx scikit-learn
```
This will install all the libraries you need for this course.
(Optional) Install VSCode.

Working on Python Code

Open up a file_name.py file in your favorite editor and edit the code.
In a terminal, navigate to the directory where your Python file is, e.g.,
```
cd path/to/directory/where/file/is
```
Run the command
```
python3 file_name.py
```
to evaluate the code in that file. If you want to evaluate the file and then go into an interactive Python REPL, then run
```
python3 -i file_name.py
```

Tips

You may want to brush up on basic command line usage. Important things to know:
- ls show whats in your current directory
- pwd show the path of the directory you're currently in
- cd path/to/directory_name go to the directory given by the path
- rm file delete file (this cannot be undone! it's not the same as putting in the Trash folder)
- rm -r directory_name delete a directory and everything in it (this cannot be undone!)
- touch file_name create an empty file called file_name
- mkdir dir_name create an empty directory called dir_name
(Become comfortable with these commands!)
I generally recommend putting all your code for this course in a single directory in, for example, your Documents folder. You can run the command
```
mkdir -p ~/Documents/CS132-F24
```
to create this directory. This is equivalent to going to the Documents folder (in Finder for MacOS) and creating a new folder.
Setting up a machine takes some time (and some tears). But please understand that this is an incredibly important part of being a computer scientist. You have to know how to set up your coding environment.