Week 1: Principles & Practices.

A.k.a. Welcome! Documentation is your new personality📄🧠


🪛 Things drilled into us from Day 1:
(Repeated for emphasis. And trauma.) (ಥ﹏ಥ)

  • 📌 Documentation is everything.
  • ✅ Simple + Working ❌ Complex + Broken.
  • ✍️ Document as you go
  • 🌀 Spiral development & Demand vs Supply side time.
  • 🗜️ Compress files. Please. (._. )
  • 🫥 If no documentation, it didn’t happen :')
  • 🧹 Clean as you work
  • 📄 Did I mention documentation? 💀

📋 Assignment Brief

  • 💥 Log in, download, install, and learn how to use different softwares and apps.
  • 🌐 Build a personal website to showcase our work.
  • 🧠 Ideate the Final Project (existential crisis included)(;´Д`)
  • ✍️ Sign, commit, and push the student agreements.

To make this manageable (and slightly less terrifying), I divided the assignment into four parts:


⚙️ Setting Up

I started by downloading and installing Git… and then immediately realised I had no idea what I was doing 🙂 Thankfully, my mentors Jesal Mehta and Pranav Gawde helped me through the entire process ( ´ ▽ ` )

1️⃣ Installing Git

  • Install Git to enable local repository management.
  • Download Git for Windows from the official website.
  • The setup wizard asks a lot of questions — most can be skipped by clicking Next
  • However, there are a couple of important settings I had to change:

Change the following:

  • Initial branch name → LET GIT DECIDE
  • Terminal emulator → Windows default console window
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2️⃣ Setting Up Python 🐍

Honestly… no idea how I did this?? (╥﹏╥)

  • ❌ Initially installed the Windows Python Manager (bad idea)
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  • 💥 This caused a lot of issues.
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  • Mentors noticed I had installed the wrong version.
  • Fixed by installing Python – Windows installer (64-bit)(⌐■_■)

3️⃣ Generating an SSH Key 🔐

An SSH key is a secure digital passkey that lets your computer connect to servers without repeatedly entering a password.

  • 🔑 Private key — stored on my computer
  • 🌐 Public key — shared with GitLab

When both match, access is granted ✨

  • Opened Command Prompt.
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  • Copied SSH key generation command from GitLab.
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  • Pasted and ran the command.
  • Connected Git to my local drive.
  • Added the key to GitLab under Preferences.
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4️⃣ Setting Up VS Code

  • Downloaded Visual Studio Code.
  • Opened my cloned repository folder 📁
  • Edited and managed HTML files locally.
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5️⃣ Authorising Git

  • Used SSH key to authorise Git.
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  • Opened integrated terminal in VS Code.
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  • Ran git clone with repository ID.
  • Repository successfully cloned (づ。◕‿‿◕。)づ
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