All righty.
So we've spent a healthy amount of time talking about the higher level things, kind of setting the
stage for this course.
Why should you care about databases, what our database is, what's my SQL?
Where does that fit in?
What SQL and so on.
Now it's actually time for us to really get going, so hopefully that's a little bit exciting.
Unfortunately, the first thing we have to do is install the tools, install my SQL on your computers.
So I want to add a note really early on, which is that in my experience, installing anything can be
a pain.
And that's true for someone who is an experienced developer all the way down to a complete beginner.
It's always a potential point of friction where things can go wrong and nothing is more frustrating
than being excited to do something, being excited to learn something new and then have it not work
or have to spend hours trying to figure out why it's not installed correctly and what's going on.
In my opinion, it's one of the worst parts of being a developer.
And then also in my experience teaching, I've seen a lot of people get discouraged really quickly when
something doesn't work out.
If you're unable to install my SQL, when you want to learn my SQL, it might just send you in a different
direction and you might end up learning another database like SQL Light that doesn't require as much
setup and that's easier to install.
So we don't want that to happen.
Nothing against SQL, but this is not a course on SQL Light, so I just wanted to put that out there
that keep in mind, installing can be a pain, but I'm going to do my best to try and make it painless.
So we have three options.
The first one for installation is to install it on a PC.
So if you have a PC, if you're a Windows user, you can follow those instructions.
The next option, as you probably guessed, is that you can install it on a mac.
So if you're following along using a mac, this would be a good choice for you.
But there's also a third option, which is to install it using a service called Cloud nine.
So if you've taken my other course, you may be familiar with Cloud nine.
It's basically an online interactive development environment.
In just a couple of videos, I'll go into some more detail about it.
And before we go any further, I just want to highlight that installing using Cloud nine is without
a doubt the best and easiest way to get started.
And it's what I recommend that you use, which is why I spent so much time drawing this little box around
it install on cloud nine.
So why is that?
Why do I recommend that you use cloud nine?
There's a couple of reasons.
The first is that it's what I'll be using in the course.
So rather than doing everything on a mac and confusing the windows people or doing everything on a PC
and confusing people on a mac, I'm going to use cloud nine, which is something that anybody can use
regardless of the type of machine that you own, how old it is, how much ram you have, what operating
system, that doesn't matter.
It levels the playing field.
So because I'll be using it in the course, I think it makes it a lot easier for you to follow along.
Now, if you're someone who's pretty confident as a developer, of course, feel free to install it
however you'd like.
But I highly, highly recommend that you use Cloud nine at least early on, because you'll be able to
follow along much, much easier.
And the second reason, equally important, is that it's way easier for you to get help if something
goes wrong, if you're doing a project or an exercise and something doesn't seem to be working the way
you expect or you hit a bug or you're just not sure what you did wrong, you can easily share a link
to your environment through Cloud nine and post that on our discussion boards, and either me or one
of the Tas can help you out, so it's way easier for you to get help if you were just working on your
PC or Mac and you're trying to explain what's wrong, you're going to have to take some screenshots.
You're going to have to upload them.
You might have to copy and paste some stuff from your terminal, but if you use cloud nine and I'll
show you this when we talk about Cloud nine in more depth, you can just take the link of your workspace
and share that.
And anyone will be able to look at your code and diagnose a problem.
And the third reason that I didn't write down, and this is a really important one, is that installation
is basically painless.
You have to sign up for an account, and that's about the worst part.
Once you're past that, it's one command to get my SQL working, which is pretty amazing.
So with all of that said, this is my recommendation or prescription for how you should go about this
course.
Use Cloud nine to follow along throughout the course.
So everything that I do and cloud nine, you'll be able to replicate yourself in cloud nine.
And then once we finish the course, you can return back to the installation instructions and then install
it on your Mac or your PC natively.
So I'll talk about what that means.
What's the difference between installing natively versus cloud nine when we talk more about Cloud nine
in just a little bit?
So that's my recommendation.
I highly, highly recommend that you start with Cloud nine and then later on, if you'd like, move
to working on your PC or your Mac.
All right.
So enough about that.
Let's get down to business.