VSCodium

There are a lot of text editors people use to write programs.

For the purposes of this book I am going to reccomend you use one called "VSCodium."

If you have already been introduced to a different text editor and want to use it that will be fine. The reasons I am suggesting this one are as follows:

• It will not have AI extensions enabled by default.
• It will not have a Java plugin installed by default.
• It will work about the same as VSCode, another competent editor.

Now you might read that list and think "why wouldn't I want a Java plugin?"

That is a valid question. The answer is that such plugins are usually made with working professional developers as their intended user. The kinds of support they provide can be helpful in preventing you from making all sorts of mistakes and help you to produce working code quicker.

Somewhat counter-intuitively - and you'll have to take my word for this - when you are learning you actually want to be making mistakes and producing working code slower. Your primary goal should be to acquire a skillset and "bumping into the guard rails" is helpful for that.