Python for Absolute Beginners Transcripts
Chapter: Welcome to the course
Lecture: What will we cover?
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What exactly are we going to cover
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in this course?
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Well we're going to start talkin about why Python
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and why programming?
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Well we actually just concluded that, didn't we?
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Programming is a super power and Python
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is a great programming language that's easy to learn.
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Put those together and you're off to a good start.
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Next we're going to talk about how to get help.
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Something that's really frustrating
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when you're getting started in programming is, things
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are not working.
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You have to type exact, precise stuff to the computer.
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It's not as hard as it sounds, but if it's not just right.
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Not even just the words that you write
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but the order and the steps and the data.
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If it comes unglued even just a little bit
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it's going to freak out and crash and not work.
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And refuse to carry on.
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That's frustrating when you're getting started
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because it's hard to know how to fix that.
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Hard to know how to get help.
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So there's a couple of options I have for you on how
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to get help, both self help and help through
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the course here.
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We also want to make sure that your computer is ready
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to take this course, so we're going to talk about setup.
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How do you get Python, the right version
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of Python installed?
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As well as what editors you can use to write code
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and edit code throughout this course?
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So we want to spend a little bit a time
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making sure everybody's setup and ready to take the course.
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And then we get into the programming concepts proper.
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We're going to talk about the big ideas of programming.
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And what I mean by this is these are the ideas
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that you would learn
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from your first year computer science class
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if you went and took programming in the university.
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But instead of spending a whole year in a class
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we're just going to spend a little bit a time
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and hit the high points.
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But it's important that you have the right foundation
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to know how programs execute, what source code is
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how it gets translated to executable stuff, and so on.
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Then we're going to start writing some code.
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Writing your first line a code
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well we're going to write more than one line a code.
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We're going to write a bunch a fun things
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but here we're going to start writing a little bit a code.
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Visualizing what that does to the computer, both graphically
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and just runnin it to see what it does.
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We'll get started there.
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Then we're going to make our code interactive.
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You can think of maybe different levels
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of complexity of writing code.
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One of 'em is, I need to do something so do x and then do y
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and then do z.
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Then you're done.
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That's a real simple type a program
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but many programs don't work that way, do they?
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If you open up your web browser, it interacts with you.
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You type some stuff into the address bar
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and it goes somewhere.
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Shows you some information.
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That you click something.
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It does somethin in response.
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Maybe it asks you a question and then it does one
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of two things, depending on what you answer.
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So making this interactive code, that either reads data
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and then makes a decision, or interacts with people
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and makes a decision.
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Or more likely does both.
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This is of course, where you need to be
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to write real software.
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And so we're going to start writing simple code.
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And then we're going to write this more interactive code
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with things like conditional statements and loops and so on.
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Once you have the core ideas of a programming language
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in place, it's tricky to figure out
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how do I attack a problem?
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You know I have this code I can write.
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It makes the computer do stuff.
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I have this problem.
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It seems extremely complicated.
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And I don't really know where to start.
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But obviously people can solve it with software, so
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there must be some path.
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But what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a bunch
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of tips and techniques on how to break down the problem, so
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that it's not nearly as hard as it seems.
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Ya know, a handful of techniques and we're going to do bunch
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of examples.
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We're going to write a lot of code and talk through them
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and sort of think through the problem.
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Here are a couple things we could do.
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I'm going to choose this way and here's why, and so on.
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We're also going to build a couple games during this course.
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Games are fun and they're interactive.
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And they can be nice and simple, but they also
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are pretty good stand ins for this
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making code interactive story, that I told you.
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Right so, we'll try to have fun and write a couple a games
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and that'll challenge the things that we can do.
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We're going to maybe have our game save stuff.
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So we want to work with files and different file formats
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that our program can save and then remember, across running
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our program from time to time.
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Things like leader boards and configurations files
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to let people extend the game without reprogramming it.
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Stuff like that.
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One of Python's really important powers is
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it has hundreds of thousands of external libraries
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that are extremely powerful.
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I give you a hint about the geneticist earlier
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who could do, ya know, just go grab one
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of these libraries and ask some questions
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of data without actually working
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on all the details to make that happen.
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So we're going to take a couple of external packages, apply
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them to some of the programs that we write
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and I'll show you where to go find many many more.
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How to work with these external packages or libraries
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and add some really cool features to the programs
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that we write. And that's it.
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This is what we're going to do.
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We're going to go dutifully through simple
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and then more complicated and more complicated code.
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And add on little bits
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of super important functionality that, I think
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will actually be a whole lot of fun for you to learn
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as we go.
