Before Your First Class
GCIS-123 is an introductory programming course open to students at every skill level — some of you have programmed before, some haven't written a line of code in your life, and the course is designed to work for both.
You'll get a lot more out of the first week if you've completed the checklist below before your first class. None of it takes long, but a couple of these steps (especially GitLab access) can take a day or two to sort out if something goes wrong, so don't leave it until the night before.
Join the Course Discord
Discord is where course announcements, discussion, and virtual mentoring hours happen outside of class. You should receive an email from your instructor with a link to join before the semester begins — if you don't see it, check your spam folder, or reach out to your instructor directly.
Once you're in, post a message in the #introduce-yourself channel with your preferred first and last name and the name of your instructor.
For example: “Hello, my name is Julia Gomez and my instructor is Professor Smith.”
Install Git
Git is the version control tool you'll use to submit every assignment this semester — you'll be committing and pushing your work constantly, so this needs to be working before you touch any starter code.
- Windows: install Git for Windows. This also installs Git Bash, a terminal you'll use throughout the course — use it instead of Command Prompt or PowerShell for anything Git-related.
- macOS: it's strongly recommended that Mac users install Homebrew if you haven't already — it makes installing Git (and everything else this semester) a lot easier. Once you have it, run brew install git. Otherwise, you can install directly from git-scm.com.
- Linux: install via your distro's package manager, e.g. sudo apt install git on Ubuntu/Debian.
Verify it worked by opening a terminal (Git Bash on Windows) and running:
git --version
You should see a version number printed back, e.g. git version 2.46.0.
Get Access to GCCIS GitLab
All of our starter code and assignment repositories live on the GCCIS GitLab server, git.gccis.rit.edu. You will not be able to access any assignment until you've logged in at least once, so don't put this off.
- Go to git.gccis.rit.edu and sign in with your normal RIT username and password.
- If this is your first time, you may be asked to authorize the connection between your RIT account and GitLab — accept it.
Logging in is enough to get started, but before you can actually clone, push, or pull a repository from the command line, you'll need either an SSH key or a Personal Access Token set up. That's a separate, more detailed guide:
Once that's set up, see Getting Your Assignment Repo for how to fork and clone each unit's starter code — you'll repeat that part all semester.
Install Python
Python is the language we'll use all semester. Install the latest version from python.org.
Windows: on the first screen of the installer, check "Add python.exe to PATH" before clicking Install — if you miss this, Python won't be runnable from a terminal. You don't need to uninstall and start over though: just rerun the installer and choose "Modify", then make sure that box is checked.
Verify it worked:
python --version (or python3 --version on macOS/Linux)
Windows: if python --version doesn't work (a common issue — Windows ships a fake python command that just opens the Microsoft Store), try py --version instead. The py launcher is installed alongside Python and is generally more reliable on Windows, so feel free to just use it in place of python all semester.
Install VS Code
Visual Studio Code is the editor we'll use in class and in course materials. Once it's installed, open the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X) and install the official Python extension from Microsoft — it gives you syntax highlighting, autocomplete, and a "Run" button for Python files.