Learning with VS Code on Chromebooks

For the last few years, Chromebooks running Google Chrome OS have been providing an alternative to "traditional" laptops. Thanks to lots of choices, from very affordable models to high-end ones, Chromebooks are especially popular among students, who can use them for learning, completing assignments, and attending classes virtually. While Chromebooks and Chrome OS are typically centered around the web browser, you can also enable a Linux environment that allows installing native desktop applications, including Visual Studio Code! With VS Code running on your Chromebook, you can start coding easily and quickly in a variety of languages and frameworks. This includes languages such as Python, JavaScript and Node.js, Java, and C#, among many more! In this article, the first of two, we'll look at how to install Visual Studio Code on a Chromebook and how to set up an environment to start coding in Python or JavaScript/Node.js. In a later post, we'll also look at how to leverage the Remote Development extensions for VS Code to connect to more powerful development environments.