What You'll Need
Good news: getting started requires less than you might expect. No expensive software, no powerful hardware, no prior experience. Here's what you actually need.
A Computer
Any reasonably modern computer will work:
- Mac — macOS comes with excellent developer tools built in
- Windows — fully capable for development, especially with WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)
- Linux — if you're already running Linux, you're ahead of the game
You don't need a powerful machine. If your computer can run a web browser smoothly, it can handle everything in this curriculum. Laptops, desktops, even older machines — all fine.
An AI Coding Tool
You'll need access to an AI coding assistant. Several excellent options exist:
- Claude Code — Anthropic's command-line coding assistant
- Cursor — an AI-native code editor
- GitHub Copilot — AI integrated into VS Code and other editors
- Gemini CLI — Google's command-line AI tool
- Windsurf — another AI-enhanced development environment
Most have free tiers or trials. Pick one to start — you can always switch later.
A Note on Playground Tools
You may have heard of tools like Lovable, Bolt, or v0. These are "playground" tools — they let you describe an app and generate it instantly. They're great for quick prototypes and experimentation.
But Codistry trains real developers. Our goal is for you to build anything: a simple automation script, a Twitter clone, a complex CRM, a multiplayer game. Playground tools can't get you there. They're the training wheels; we're teaching you to ride.
Use them to experiment if you'd like. But the skills you'll learn here go far deeper.
Determination
This is the real requirement.
Learning to code — even with AI assistance — takes effort. You'll hit walls. You'll get frustrated. You'll encounter error messages that make no sense and spend hours debugging something that turns out to be a typo.
That's not failure. That's the process.
The only way to fail is to quit. Everything else is just learning.
That's It
A computer, an AI coding tool, and the determination to keep going. That's all you need to start building.