Your Project
Alice gets a project folder from Bit, and has no idea what's inside.
After this lesson, you'll be able to find your way around a project folder, tell what language and runtime run it, keep secrets out of files, and start programs from the terminal.
To check what an AI built, you first need a map of what's on disk: where the code lives, what runs it, which packages it borrows and where each secret belongs. Shipping to the internet comes later.
To check what an AI built, you need a map of the project folder: which files are yours (not every app uses src/ or node_modules/), what language and runtime run them, which packages they borrow, how you start them in the terminal, and where secrets live.
What this lesson covers
- 1Source code & finding your way in a project
Source code is the plain text instructions a program follows.
- 2Languages, frameworks & choosing a stack
A programming language is the vocabulary code is written in — JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Java, C#, Go and many others.
- 3Runtime: where code runs
The runtime is the engine that runs your code and gives it memory, a clock and a way to talk to other computers.
- 4Build: from your code to what runs
A build is the step that turns the source code you read into the files the runtime runs: TypeScript becomes JavaScript, and many files become a few.
- 5Terminal & running programs
The terminal is where you talk to your computer in typed commands.
- 6Packages, imports & versions
A package is code someone else wrote that your project borrows.
- 7Secrets & env vars
An environment variable is a setting handed to the program when it starts.