Writing with the command line

Open iterm. You can keep it on your dock with a right click on the icon once it's open if you want to have it only a click a way – but using command+space and typing it is a good way to get use to using your keyboard more.

Speaking of, once you open iterm – I'm just going to call it the terminal from here on out – you can use the arrow keys to move your cursor left or right – or move through the history of your commands by going up and down. You can use Option and the left and right keys to jump word by word.

cd ~/Desktop
touch index.html

This moves to your Desktop. Then creates a blank file called HelloWorld.html. Now you can add some text to it.

echo "HelloWorld" 
echo "HelloWorld" > index.html
echo "HelloWorld" >> index.html
cat index.html

echo prints whatever you tell it. The > takes that output and overwrites whatever you tell it. The >> takes the output and appends it to the target. cat prints out a file for you.

Now let's try using nano

That's not an effective way to write a lot of text – or code. Most systems come with a basic text editor called nano. Most coders will eventually shift to vim or emacs but you can depend on nano being there and it's pretty straight forward to use. It's simplicity is helpful.

So let's try using it.

nano HelloWorld.html

Try to delete the extra Hello World line. Now you are using nano... press control+x to quit and you will be asked if you want to save the changes from this 'buffer' – press y for yes and then enter to keep the same file name.

Cool.

and running a server

Now we are going to use python to run a server and view the file. This should work with python version 2.whatever which should be on your mac.

python --version
python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000

Now go to your browser of choice and go to http://localhost:8000 and you should see HelloWorld.

I'd say that's enough for day 2. Next time maybe we will use some HTML, CSS, and Javascript. You read more about python here if you want. It's a great language and a lot of people use it to run their server applications, learn programming, and for scientific research.

Press control+c to stop the server.