Course Setup

You will need the following things to write your programs and submit work for this class:

a Text Editor - What we use to type our code
a GitHub Account - A free account to the cloud based source code version control repository service
a Compiler/Interpreter - A program that turns our source code into a program
Git - A version control program to help us track, backup, and submit work
a Kattis Account - Required to participate in our programming competitions

Text Editor

While you can use any text editor you like, I recommend Visual Studio Code. You might want to also turn off the telemetry settings in Visual Studio Code as well if you are privacy minded.

GitHub Account

To contribute to our programming competition resource repository, you will first need to create an account. Along with your GitHub account, you can also get access to some cool resources, with the free GitHub Student Developer Pack.

Compiler/Interpreter

While Kattis supports a variety of programming languages, most competitions generally accept code written in the following languages:

C/C++
Java
Python 3

You may use whichever language you are most comfortable with. C++ and Python are solid choices as they are high-level languages that we focus on in our curriculm already. You only need one language setup, so decide with your group on a language of choice. Details or resources to setup each language follow below:

C/C++ Setup

Windows - If you already have CLion installed, that should work just fine for writing C++ code (just make sure you are using MinGW). You can also use the WSL, MSYS2, or Cygwin environments to install C/C++ tools. I do not recommend using Visual C++ as most programming competitions use a Unix/Linux environment with those standard compilers (usually gcc/g++ or clang).
MacOS - You can install C and C++ tools using the following command in your terminal (xcode-select --install). You may already have these installed from another class. If you can run the command g++ on your terminal, you likely are already setup.

Java

The current Long Term Support version of the Java Development Kit is version 17. You can download the installer for your platform from the oracle website.

Python

You can install the latest version of Python from the Python website. Only use Python version 3.

Git

Contributions to the programming competition resource repository will be facilitated using Git. You can install Git from the offical website. MacOS installs git by default with the xcode command line utilities, so you may already have it installed. Run git on the terminal to check if you are unsure.

Kattis Account

You can create your free Kattis account from their offical website. Make sure to associate your profile to the College of Wooster.