Mastering Ethereum - Do I need to run a node to go through the book?

Hey so I've started going through the book "Mastering Ethereum" by Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Gavin Wood.

I've done my first smart contract (faucet) in chapter 2 and now got to a part focused on full nodes. I don't have enough space/resources on my computer to run a full node, nor (I think) a test node.

The book mentions:

" A full node running on a live mainnet network is not necessary for Ethereum development. You can do almost everything you need to do with a testnet node (which connects you to one of the smaller public test blockchains), with a local private blockchain like Ganache, or with a cloud-based Ethereum client offered by a service provider like Infura. "

I just wanted to know if, for the purposes of the book, I do need to run a node or not. We already developed a smart contract on Remix without installing anything so if I can save 75 Gb of space and not install even a testnode I'd be happy to skip that part and only understand it theoretically.

However if it's a must for future chapters I'll be happy to oblige.

Thank you.