Software Installation

The software installation pages guide you through the process for installing several tools that we will use on a daily basis in MUDE. A brief overview is provided here:

• Miniconda: a software distribution that includes:

  • the Python programming language (we will use version 3.12)

  • Conda (or conda): an environment manager

  • a few other tools to make things go smoothly, for example the Python package manager pip

• Visual Studio Code (abbreviated VS Code or VSC):

  • this is our Integrated Development Environment (IDE) of choice becuase of its ease-of-use, flexibility and collaboration features

  • note that VSC is an alternative to Jupyter Notebook or Jupyter Lab IDE’s, which you may have used in the past

• Jupyter: a Python-based software

  • Note that Jupyter Notebooks are a file format (extension *.ipynb), and Jupyter Notebook is also an IDE

  • We will install Jupyter in our computing environment using conda and interact with the Jupyter Notebook *.ipynb files using VSC as our IDE

Note

If you are not familiar with Jupyter notebooks you should spend some time getting comfortable; hopefully you have a patient group member that is willing to show you a few tricks. Even for those who have used them before, if you are unfamiliar with VS Code you will need a few minutes to get used to the slightly different interface.