Coding AI Apps in Style: Setting up your development environment

I recently purchased a 13 inch Macbook Pro, with an M1 Chip, with 256 GB SSD and 8 GB of unified memory. I wanted to document how to set up a functional development environment on Mac OS with VS Code.

First step, download iTerm2: https://iterm2.com/

Next, check if you have zsh:

zsh --version

If you do not have zsh, you can use brew to install zsh:

brew install zsh

If you do not have brew:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Next, Download OhMyZsh:

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Get the PowerLevel10k Theme:

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-$HOME/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/themes/powerlevel10k

Modify ~/.zshrc file by replacing ZSH_THEME = “robbyrussell” to be ZSH_THEME = “powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k”

nano ~/.zshrc

Download iTerm2 Color Schemes: https://github.com/mbadolato/iTerm2-Color-Schemes

Open iTerm2, and navigate to iTerm2 > Preferences > Profile > Colors > Color Presets > Import. Click on schemes folder from iTerm2 Color Schemes Download and import argonaut.itermcolors, batman.itermcolors, or whichever color schemes you would like. My terminal looks like this:

Natan’s Terminal using iTerm2 and OhMyZsh

Download VSCode: https://code.visualstudio.com/

Open VSCode and select Monokai Color Theme.

Open Command Pallete: Command Shift P, and type shell command, install code command in path. Now when you restart iTerm2, you can navigate to a directory and open VSCode by typing

code .

Here are some great extensions to install for Python:

Python, AutoDocstring, Python Type Hint, Visual Studio IntelliCode

You can run a Hello World sanity check in VS Code :)

To make your VSCode Terminal look good, click Code -> Preferences -> Settings, edit settings.json by adding:

"terminal.integrated.fontFamily": "MesloLGS NF",
"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
"terminal.background":"#131212",
"terminal.foreground":"#dddad6",
"terminal.ansiBlack":"#1D2021",
"terminal.ansiBrightBlack":"#665C54",
"terminal.ansiBrightBlue":"#0D6678",
"terminal.ansiBrightCyan":"#8BA59B",
"terminal.ansiBrightGreen":"#237e02",
"terminal.ansiBrightMagenta":"#8F4673",
"terminal.ansiBrightRed":"#FB543F",
"terminal.ansiBrightWhite":"#FDF4C1",
"terminal.ansiBrightYellow":"#FAC03B",
"terminal.ansiBlue":"#00a1f9",
"terminal.ansiCyan":"#8BA59B",
"terminal.ansiGreen":"#95C085",
"terminal.ansiMagenta":"#8F4673",
"terminal.ansiRed":"#FB543F",
"terminal.ansiWhite":"#A89984",
"terminal.ansiYellow":"#FAC03B"
},