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Visual Studio Code · Foundations
Set up an editor the project decides, and ship the project from it.
What you’ll end up with
One finished workspace. A small society’s website folder opened as a Visual Studio Code workspace, its extension recommendations and settings kept inside the project, a formatter configuration the project owns, every file formatted, two faults found and fixed, a readme that says how to work on the site, and a Git repository with three commits and an ignore file — all made from the editor’s own views.
9½
hours in all — about 6½ guided, 3 on your own
6
sessions. Each designed to be completed in one sitting
Free
No payment and no card required.
Finishing gives you a completion record showing the work you built, and all three levels earn the Alongrail Certificate in Visual Studio Code. See what you’ll build →
You don’t need prior experience with Visual Studio Code. There’s no payment and no card required.
From one raw file to a finished project
0185 min
Install, open the folder, and change one thing
The editor installed from the vendor's own page, the society's folder open and trusted, the five parts of the window named so every later instruction has a vocabulary, and one line of the readme edited, previewed and saved.
0290 min
Choose your extensions, and keep the choice with the project
The page running inside the editor from a local server, two extensions installed after reading who published each and what its identifier is, and a recommendations file kept with the project so that whoever opens the folder next is offered the same two.
03105 min
Let the project decide the formatting
Format on save and a default formatter set for this workspace and not for you, a Prettier configuration the project owns, the unformatted script formatted in one keystroke, and the stylesheet's bad property found from the Problems panel and fixed.
04105 min
Source control, from nothing
Git present on your computer or installed from the link the editor prints, your name and email set once, the folder made a repository from the editor's own view, the backup file kept out with an ignore file, and a first commit of the whole setup with a message that says what it is.
05100 min
Find the fault, fix it, prove it, commit it
The wrong file name found by searching the whole project, fixed on one line, proved by the page showing every plot and its total, read back as a difference before recording, and committed on its own with a message that says what it fixed.
0690 min
Ship it
The spell checker added and the readme's words fixed, the society's name taught to the dictionary for this workspace, a section that tells a colleague how to work on the site, a stray edit discarded on purpose, a third commit, and the folder closed and reopened to prove the environment persists.
What you need before you start
A laptop or desktop
Sessions need a laptop or desktop. If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer. Windows 10 or Windows 11, or a Mac on macOS 12 or later.
Chrome or Edge
Alongrail runs in the browser, beside Visual Studio Code.
The course files
Everything you work with is in the download.
What’s free
The whole course: every session, both parts, the files, and your record. Alongrail charges nothing for it. No payment, and no card at any point.
The software
None. Visual Studio Code is free, the three extensions are free, and nothing in this level asks for an account, a card or a sign-in.
The data you’ll work with
Every file is invented — the companies, the people and everything in them are made up for the course.
Before you start
The course covers Visual Studio Code, on your own computer.
- Windows 10 or Windows 11, or a Mac on macOS 12 or later
- A browser, to run Alongrail while Visual Studio Code runs in its own window, and to download the editor from code.visualstudio.com in session one — no account and no sign-in is needed there
- The project bundle fernhill-site.zip, downloaded from the course page and unzipped somewhere you can find again — it holds one folder, fernhill-site, with the site's six files inside
- The on-your-own bundle wexcombe-site.zip, downloaded from the course page and unzipped the same way — it holds one folder, wexcombe-site, with seven files inside — so that two folders with near-identical files are told apart by their names
- For a fresh start on any session after the first, that session's start bundle from the course page — fernhill-s2-start.zip to fernhill-s6-start.zip, and wexcombe-s2-start.zip to wexcombe-s6-start.zip — each holding the folder as the sessions before leave it, unzipped in place of the folder you have
- Each session has a guided run on Fernhill and an on-your-own run on Wexcombe. Do the on-your-own run after its guided run — straight after it, or once all six guided sessions are done; the on-your-own runs follow one another in their own sequence either way
- Session four installs Git if your computer has none: on Windows from the link the editor itself prints, on a Mac through one typed command that installs Apple's own command line tools. Both are free and neither needs an account
- Nothing in this course leaves your computer. No account is made, nothing is published, and both societies are invented
- Not a debugging course. Running and stepping through a program presumes a language runtime and belongs to the level after this one, where the track puts it.
- No account anywhere. Nothing is published to GitHub, no settings are synced, and no extension asks for a sign-in. Git and GitHub Foundations is the companion course for publishing a repository; it is not required here.
- No linter. A formatter is a decision one person can make; a linter is a policy a team makes, and it waits for Practitioner.
- Two operating systems, and nobody has watched either. The build could run Prettier, the CSS validator, the spell checker's engine and git, and could not run the editor. Every label a step names is sourced or marked untested.
Alongrail teaches the software and gives you a record of what you built, with a link to the work itself. What happens with it afterwards is yours. We don’t place people and we take no part in anyone’s recruitment process.
Enrol free and start now.
Sign in, confirm the one thing the course needs, and session 1 opens. No payment, and no card at any point.
If something goes wrong on the way, press “Something’s wrong” in the panel, or write to hello@alongrail.com — we reply within one working day.
Frequently asked questions
What you build
Start with a folder of loose files belonging to an invented allotment society and a computer with no editor on it, and finish with a working environment a colleague could open and get the same setup, and a committed, formatted project with a history you made from the editor's own source-control view.
The society's folder opened as a Visual Studio Code workspace, with the extension recommendations and the workspace settings recorded inside the project, a Prettier configuration the project owns, every source file formatted, the stylesheet's bad property and the script's wrong file name fixed, a readme that says how to work on the site, and a Git repository with three commits and an ignore file, all made from the editor's own views, with five short terminal commands and no other typing beyond lines the course gives exactly.
How a session works
- Open Visual Studio Code
- Share your screen
- One instruction
- You do it
- It confirms it
- Next
You open Visual Studio Code and share your screen. Alongrail reads what’s there and gives you one instruction. You do it. It confirms the step landed, then gives you the next one. If something doesn’t match what you see, one button gets you back on track.
Guided
In the Fields list, tick Region. The chart fills in.
One field on the axis, one measure as the value.
then
On your owna different company’s data
Same job, a different company's files. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask.
Guided, then on your own.
The second part of every session uses a different company’s data, with the same kind of mess in different places. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask. It’s the work your record points to.
About 9½ hours in all·about 6½ guided·about 3 on your own
What you earn — the record, the certificate and a sample
Completion record
- Name
- Your name
- Course
- Visual Studio Code Foundations — a working environment you set up, and a project you shipped from it
- Completed
- The date you finish
- Project
- The project you built on your own →
- Skills demonstrated
- Installing and opening a code editor on a folder, and trusting a workspace deliberately · Reading and editing files, with the preview alongside · Choosing extensions by publisher and identifier, and recording the choice with the project · Workspace settings against user settings, and a formatter the project owns · Formatting a file, and reading the Problems panel · Initialising a repository, ignoring a file, staging and committing from the editor's own view · Searching a project, fixing a fault, and reading the change as a difference before committing it · Discarding an unwanted change safely · Documenting how to work on a project so the next person gets the same environment
What was built
The society's folder opened as a Visual Studio Code workspace, with the extension recommendations and the workspace settings recorded inside the project, a Prettier configuration the project owns, every source file formatted, the stylesheet's bad property and the script's wrong file name fixed, a readme that says how to work on the site, and a Git repository with three commits and an ignore file, all made from the editor's own views, with five short terminal commands and no other typing beyond lines the course gives exactly.
The 6 sessions, and when each was completed on their own
Each session was completed twice: once with step-by-step guidance on one company’s data, then on a second company’s data from a brief, with guidance only when asked. Every check passed on both. Alongrail records the sessions, the checks and the dates; the dashboard itself is the learner’s own, hosted where they chose.
A completion record for VS Code Foundations, now. It names the course, the date you finished, the skills you demonstrated, and links the project you built on your own. It’s private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time.
The record is a description of work you did, not a claim about you. Anyone who opens it can see the work for themselves.
The Alongrail Certificate in Visual Studio Code when all three levels are complete. Foundations is the first of three. Practitioner and Professional are in development, with no dates. See the track →
Your screen stays yours
It looks when you ask. Never otherwise. Images of your screen are not stored. What Alongrail sees →
Nothing you build is public until you publish it. Your record is private until you say so, and you can unpublish it at any time.
What’s Visual Studio Code?
Visual Studio Code is the software this course is built in. It runs on your own computer.
You won’t learn it by watching hours of tutorials. You’ll learn it by building something real with it.
Who you’re building it for
Fernhill Allotments Society lets twenty plots behind an old dairy on the edge of a market town. It has a one-page website that lists the plots with their sizes and annual fees, so that anyone asking about a plot can see what is free and what it costs.
The site was made by a member who has since moved away. What remains is a folder of files copied from their laptop: the page, its stylesheet, a small script that reads the plot list, the list itself, the readme, and a backup file some editor wrote by itself.
Nobody on the committee has an editor installed, and the two people who have opened the files in a plain text editor have each changed the indentation to their own taste. The page has not shown the plot list for months, and nobody knows why.
The committee wants three things: one way of working on the site that every member sets up the same way, the page showing the plots again, and a record of who changed what, so that the next person to move away leaves less behind.
Your job is to build the project that answers it.
Do I need to know Visual Studio Code already?
No. The course assumes you’ve never opened it.
What if I get stuck?
Press the button in the panel and say what you see. Alongrail works out where you actually are and picks the instruction back up.
Why 9½ hours, when other courses are 40?
Because the time is spent doing the work rather than watching it. About 6½ hours is guided; the rest is you building the same thing again on your own.
What does Alongrail see on my screen?
Only the window you choose to share, and only when you ask it to look. Images of your screen are not stored by Alongrail. What Alongrail sees →
Can I use a Mac?
Yes. Visual Studio Code runs on Windows and macOS.
What if I miss a week?
Nothing closes. The dates are there to help you keep moving, not to catch you out.
What’s the “on your own” part?
The second half of every session: the same work on a different company’s data, with Alongrail quiet unless you ask. Both parts are needed for your completion record.
Is it really free?
Yes. No payment, and no card at any point.
Who can see what I build?
Nobody, until you say so. Your record is private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time. What you build stays in your own files or account; where a step publishes something to the software’s own site, the step says so and says who can see it.
Where this course sits
Visual Studio Code Foundations is Foundations in VS Code. The track has three levels; each one you complete earns its own record, and all of them together earn the Alongrail Certificate in Visual Studio Code. All the courses →