1. So where's that list
— Artem. How's it coming along?
Tommy swivels around in his chair and puts on the face of a man deeply absorbed in his work.
— Great, Uncle Oliver. Just great.
— Great, — Oliver repeats, and looks at the screen over Tommy's shoulder. — I gave you a list this afternoon. Eighteen items. Did you install anything from it?
A pause.
— Right, — Oliver says. — I can see you installed something. You installed an arkanoid.
Lying is pointless. Making excuses even more so: say "I was working" and you get "so what about the list?"; say "I didn't have time" and you get "so what were you busy with?" Both doors lead into the same unpleasant room.
So Tommy does what he always does when he's cornered — he doesn't defend himself, he asks questions.
— Uncle Oliver, — he says with the most concerned look he can manage, — I was actually trying to catch you. I got stuck right at the very beginning. That stuff all installs through the terminal, right? And I don't know the first thing about it. I'm scared I'll wipe out something I shouldn't. Will you show me how to work with it?
And — it works.
A second ago Oliver was about to chew out a slacker, and now he's being asked for his expertise. He even straightens up a little — barely noticeably, but Tommy catches it. The complaint about the list quietly slides into the background, and up front comes his favorite thing: explaining how everything works to someone who has finally thought to ask.
— Well, at least you had the brains for that, — Oliver grumbles, but in a different tone now. — Good call not poking around at random. Sit down over here.
He walks over to his own desk and turns the monitor toward Tommy. On it — a black window with lines of text and a blinking cursor.
Tommy tenses up a little without meaning to. He wriggled out of it, sure, but now he actually has to listen.
2. Two ways to talk to a computer
— I know that face, — Oliver snorts. — "A hacker. Scary green letters. I'm about to launch a missile at the Pentagon." Relax.
— So what is this window, anyway? — Tommy is still eyeing it warily. — It always seemed like you click the wrong thing and everything breaks for good.
— Look, — Oliver starts from far off. — You can talk to a person out loud, or you can write to them in a chat. Same communication, two ways. It's exactly the same with a computer.
— How do you control a computer? With a mouse. You see an icon, click it, drag it around. Convenient, visual. But there's a second way — with commands, with text.
He points to the black window:
— This is the terminal. A window where you talk to the computer not with a mouse, but with command words. Type a command, press Enter — the computer executes it. This is not some hacker screen from the movies. It's just another way to give instructions: instead of "find the icon and click it" — "write what to do."
— And why bother, if the mouse is more convenient?
— Because with a command you can say exactly and quickly what would take ten clicks with a mouse, — Oliver tries to come up with a good picture for it.
— Picture this: a computer is a giant factory. The mouse is walking around it on foot and poking things with your finger. The terminal is handing out orders in words. Same facility, two ways to run it.
— Go on, — Tommy is getting interested.
3. "Here": the terminal always has a current folder
— Now for the most important thing, without which everything gets mixed up later, — Oliver gets serious. — The terminal always has a current folder. The "here" where it is right now. Commands do not happen "in the computer in general" — they happen at a specific point.
He goes back to the factory:
— On the factory floor, you're always standing in some room. Say "turn everything off" — the workers will turn off everything in this room, not in the whole factory. The terminal works the same way: it always "stands" in some folder, and the commands apply to it.
Oliver rolls his chair back and nudges his keyboard over to Tommy — that very one that clatters like a typewriter.
— Go ahead yourself. It's my machine, you can't do any real damage. Type this in.
pwd # prints the path to the current folder — "where I am standing right now"— By the way, this symbol # and the text after it are a comment, an explanation for a human. The computer does not execute it; I wrote it for you. In the world of commands, explanations are marked exactly this way — with #.
Then — a command to look around and see what is in the current folder:
ls # prints the list of files and folders "here"— It's like looking around the room: what's standing around you. ls is short for list.
Tommy types as cautiously as a bomb-disposal expert — doubly so on someone else's machine — and waits for something to explode. He presses Enter. Nothing blew up. The terminal just prints the path and the list. Boring, clear, no dark magic at all.
— See, Artem, — Oliver says in the same even tone. — Nobody exploded.
— That's it? — Tommy breathes out, his shoulders relaxing. — And here I was thinking.
4. Moving between folders
— Since there is a "here," — Oliver continues, — then you can also move somewhere else. That's what the cd command does. From the English change directory — "change the folder."
cd my-project # go into the my-project folder (move into this room)— And if the folder doesn't exist yet, you create it with the mkdir command, from make directory:
mkdir my-project # create a new my-project folder
cd my-project # and go into it right away— There you have the entire minimum toolkit so you don't get lost, — Oliver counts on his fingers. — pwd — where I am, ls — what's around me, cd — move, mkdir — create a folder. You don't need to memorize it. What matters is the gist: you are always standing somewhere, you can look around, and you can move.
5. The list hasn't gone anywhere
— There you go, — Oliver wraps up. — Let's say I wasn't teaching you commands. I was teaching you not to be scared. Now you're going off to install things — that window will open by itself over there, and you'd better understand what's going on inside it.
He gets up, picks up his mug — and finishes him off from the doorway:
— And one more thing. That list hasn't gone anywhere. Eighteen items, start from the top. I'll come by in the evening and see how much you got through.
Tommy is left alone.
He did bargain himself a reprieve — about forty minutes, exactly enough to go get a coffee. But the evening ahead is still the same: download, install, wait, install again, log in somewhere, and somewhere it won't work at all. Eighteen times in a row.
He gloomily opens the notepad on item one.
6. Eighteen in one
The phone buzzes.
— Don't install things off the list.
— There's a better way: one archive, one run — and all eighteen utilities get installed at once.
— Half an hour, and you'll have everything he was planning to stretch across the whole evening. I've sent you the link to the installer.
— What do you mean, all at once?
— Can you give me more detail?
— Sure.
A long message drops in right after — this time without a single black redaction bar, as if censorship doesn't apply to instructions at all.
What the installer will set up
🤖 AI and voice:
- Claude Code — that very AI agent, only the real one, on your own machine.
- Handy — a speech recognition utility. Instead of typing a task for the agent, you'll be able to dictate it by voice.
- Several ready-made extensions for Claude Code itself.
💻 Development environment:
- IntelliJ IDEA — a program that makes it convenient to work with the entire project at once. With plugins right away: JavaRush, Claude Code, and Python support.
- VS Code — the second popular environment, with the same plugins. It's installed alongside so you can pick whichever feels familiar.
🔧 Under the hood:
The tools that everything runs on. You don't need to figure them out separately — they just need to be there: Node.js and Python, Java and Gradle, and also Git — you'll need it later in the course to keep the project history. On Windows, Git Bash is installed together with it — the very terminal you have just gotten acquainted with.
🔑 Settings and login:
The best part. You won't have to enter keys or log in: everything is ready to use right after installation.
Where to get it and how to run it
You can download the installer here:
https://javarush.com/downloads/ai_installer.zipUnpack the archive — inside you'll see roughly this:
JavaRush_AI_Installer/
├── Windows_install.cmd ← run on Windows
├── MacOS_install.command ← run on macOS
├── Linux_install.sh ← run on Linux
├── config/ ← your settings, login already inside
├── resources/ ← installer support files
└── README.txt ← answers to common questionsIn the root of the archive there are three launch files, one for each operating system. You only need the one that matches yours: just leave the other two alone. And do not delete or move the config and resources folders — without them the installer will not work.
Windows — double-click the Windows_install.cmd file. Windows may show the blue window "Windows protected your PC" — that is how it reacts to any program downloaded from the internet. Click "More info", and then "Run anyway".
macOS — double-click the MacOS_install.command file. If the system says it "cannot verify the developer," right-click the file → "Open", and then in the window that appears click "Open" again. You will only be asked once.
Linux — open the terminal in the unpacked folder (you already know how to do that — the cd command) and run:
bash Linux_install.shWhat is important to know in advance
⏳ Installation takes 20–40 minutes — about a gigabyte is downloaded. You can go about your business, but you must not close the installer window until it reports completion.
⬛ A black window will open, and that's normal. This is where everything you have just learned comes in handy: the installer works in the terminal, and for the next half hour text will be running across it. You don't have to press anything, just let it finish.
🔐 The installer will ask for the administrator password. On macOS and Linux, the password does not appear at all while you type — no dots, no stars. The keyboard isn't broken and your input isn't being ignored: that's by design. Type blindly and press Enter.
⚠️ The archive is personal. Inside are your login details for all course tools. Do not post it publicly and do not share it with others: these details are used to sign in under your account. Sharing the download link is fine — everyone gets their own archive.
📄 If you want the details — what exactly gets installed, where it's placed, what the installer doesn't touch, what data is collected, and how to undo all of it — read the separate article "The JavaRush installer: what it does to your computer." Everything is laid out there, with no sugarcoating.
Check that everything is in place
When the installer reports completion, open a new terminal window — the old one doesn't know about the new commands yet — and type:
claude --versionIf a version gets printed in response — everything is in place, the AI agent is on your computer. If the terminal complains command not found — open one more new window; if that doesn't help — take a look at the installer report, it will say what went wrong.
Tommy launches it and leans back in his chair. In the black window, lines run past one after another — those very eighteen items, only somebody else is dealing with them.
He looks at the notepad with Oliver's list. Then at the screen. Then at the notepad again — and finally he closes it and puts it away in a drawer.
The evening he had bargained himself a forty-minute reprieve from has just collapsed into half an hour of waiting.
7. Order in the project
While the installer churns away, Tommy goes back to his games — and discovers that over the course of the day he has made a mess of the project: the files are all jumbled together, and it's no longer obvious which game is which.
And that's when it dawns on him that he doesn't have to do this by hand either.
— Listen, — he writes to Sam. — Sort everything in here out properly.
Tommy looks at the neat file tree and thinks that in a single morning he went all the way from "programs live somewhere in the cloud" to "I've got a project here, and I've tidied it up."
And in the corner of the screen, the installer is still running.
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