Set Up Your Coding Environment

Before you can start coding, there are a few tools you will need to install, starting with Node runtime.

Install Node

Go to NodeJS.org and download, then install the latest version of Node. This installs the Node JavaScript runtime, allowing you to run Node servers. It also installs the Node Package Manager, or  npm , an invaluable tool for installing the packages you need to build your projects.

Clone the Front-End App

Now it's time to create what will be your working directory for this course: you can call it something like  go-fullstack.

Once you have created that directory, you'll want to clone the code for the front-end app into a subdirectory called  frontend . From within your working directory:

You can then do the following:

cd frontend
npm install
npm run start

This will install all the dependencies the front-end app needs and then launch the development server. Now, if you navigate to http://localhost:4200 , you should see the following (assuming you've followed the above steps): 

Feel free to explore to get an idea of what you will be building. It doesn't do much yet, but that's where you come in!

The final step is to create a second subdirectory in your working directory, called  backend .  This is where you will build the Express app.

Let's Recap!

• Node can be downloaded and installed from NodeJS.org

• the frontend app for this course can be cloned using  git clone  , installed with  npm install  and run with  npm run start

Now that your development environment is configured, let's see how to start your Node server!