Learning Test-Driven Development

Appendix A. Development Environment Setup

Setting up your development environment is a prerequisite to writing any code. Fortunately, setting up a reliable “dev env” is easier today than it used to be. And it keeps getting easier.

By the time you read this book, there are possibly (perhaps likely) better alternatives to what I suggest below. If there is an easier mechanism to set up your dev env, use it. Also, share it with other readers of this book. (You may send an email to [e-mail].)

This appendix is not an exhaustive list of all the ways you can set up a dev env. Nor does it offer step-by-step instructions on how to install each language, integrated development environment, plugin, or extension (or to manage multiple versions of any of these). Such details would be both tediously verbose and hopelessly susceptible to obsolescence: almost all of these tools are updated regularly (every few months or even weeks). Instead of providing detailed instructions that will become stale faster than a loaf of bread, I’ve opted to provide a general overview of how to set up your dev env. There are references with hyperlinks that should guide you to more details, when you need them.

Online REPLs

REPL stands for “Read-Eval-Print Loop.” It is an interactive top-level shell that allows you to write short programs directly and easily. Any code you write in a REPL is read, then evaluated (i.e., parsed, then compiled and/or interpreted, depending on the language, and then executed). ...