This book assumes that you have access to hardware on which you can install, configure, and code against an Apache Cassandra instance. Having elevated admin or sudo privileges on the aforementioned machine will be essential to carrying out some of the tasks described.
This book is written from the perspective of running Apache Cassandra on a macOS or Linux instance. As OS-specific system administration is not within the scope of this book, readers who are new to Linux may find value in seeking out a separate tutorial prior to attempting some of the examples.
The Java coding examples will be easier to do from within an integrated developer environment (IDE), with Apache Maven installed for dependency management. You may need to look up additional resources to ensure that these components are configured properly. Several IDEs have a plugin that allows for direct integration with Apache Maven.