I felt the same way as a lot of FCC users when I got to the Git section of Back End Development. I clicked on the cloud9.io and during sign-up, “we need your credit card info…it’s for your security!” Yeah B** S*** it is! I think I’ll keep that for myself!
Anyways, I just ended up using my own PC environment to complete the challenge. I am glad I did. I think the real “meat” of the challenge was to get through the git-it program. This required npm (I already had that installed), a github account (I already had it), git (already had it). I am guessing it required NodeJS and I recently installed 8.7 on my PC.
Result: Success. Through the Ubuntu BASH terminal all the challenges were pretty easy, and I had the added bonus of being able to practice adding Git repositories on my own computer and practicing CLI in BASH.
I’d be happy to share with anyone how to install NodeJS on Ubuntu if necessary. It was very tricky on my PC.
Also, I did not have to give my credit card info… That just left me feeling too uneasy. As an alternative I could have linked my GitHub account but I also don’t like Cloud9’s permission policies. I am glad I did what I did.
Ultimately, getting a good dev environment set up on your own computer is essential and a lot of people skip cloud9 and its alternatives for that reason.
The reason freeCodeCamp went down that route in the first place was to standardise the instructions and let people get started with the least amount of friction…however, the credit card issue has proven to be a high friction point for many!
Thanks for sharing your solution, I’m sure others will find it useful.
Node 8.7 = 0.8.7?
It seems like even on quite an old Ubuntu (eg 14.04) if you can get any version of node + npm installed, it’s easy to update to node 0.12.4 via npm…
No I am pretty sure I have 8.7.0 installed. I followed a tutorial I found here:
The article is a little dramatic lol but it worked. Here is a screenshot of my node version. I ended up installing the nodejs-legacy first and it took a few tries before I got my current version installed.
It is not the same as the current NodeJS. I needed a more current version because I was installing Angular. I am not sure if 14.04 is compatible with the new NodeJS.
I think so. I could actually link my GitHub account and bypass the CC requirement. I did not really want to do that either though because they want too many permissions that I don’t want to give. I am going the “make my own dev environment” route and backing up to an external drive for safety. I’d like to be my own cloud rather than store my data with a third party.
