Please be sure to have each of these dependencies installed before proceeding. You will need each of them to follow-along.

Dependencies

Node.js for Windows

• Node offers a unified package management system that makes installing and running React simple and intuitive.

Git for Windows

• Git allows us to keep version history of our project, collaborate with other developers, and work on ideas separate from the main branch. It probably isn’t necessary for this training session, but we will be adhering to good development standards throughout, and version control is part of that set of standards. Be sure to add git to the path. Install Unix style command prompt because it’s cool.

Visual Studio Code

• We will be using VS Code as our text editor. Visual Studio Code is an open source text editor with several time saving features. It provides Emmet, Git integration, code linting and prettifying, and a command prompt, right out of the gate.

Libraries and packages:

Create-react-app

• Is an NPM package that handles the setup for new react applications. Using this package allows you to start developing quickly. You don’t need to spend time setting up test servers, transpilers, Babel, etc. It is all taken care of for you. There is some minor housekeeping required if using this functionality

Reactstrap

• Reactstrap is Bootstrap 4’s React port. We will be using this framework for easy styling and scaffolding of our project, so we can focus on the React side of things.