I’ve seen Node.js, GitHub, Bower, and Grunt mentioned many times while researching new coding techniques in the past but haven’t paid much attention to them… until now.
I’ve been using the FoundationPress theme for WordPress and was attempting to install a child theme but it was giving me a hard time, then I stumbled across a pre-built child theme hosted on GitHub. I decided that this was my time to dive into what some of these mysterious tools were.
GitHub is somewhat of a file hosting account with the ability to collaborate on projects, track changes, and easily download repositories. I’ve already fall’n love with it and I have no idea how to use it yet.
Node.js so far appears to add new abilities to my command prompt. I’m able to run commands now that let me install other programs (apps?) such as Bower and Grunt.
NPM stands for Node Package Manager. It is an application that goes along with node.js that allows you to install packages via the CLI, which is Command Line Interface. Not sure exactly how it works, but you can run commands such as npm install -g grunt to install grunt.
Bower & Grunt, I have no clue as of yet.
I’ve learned a little about Grunt. Grunt is a program that can run tasks such as compiling CSS from Sass and helps to reduce the overall work load by eliminating repetitive tasks. Much like how Sass watches an .scss file for changes and then compiles the changes on save, Grunt watches all kinds of files you assign it by building a scaffolding. More later.
Once I’ve learned a bit more I will come back and update.