Python for Absolute Beginners Transcripts
Chapter: Writing your first lines of code
Lecture: Writing code intro
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0:00
The stage has been set
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and it is finally time to write some code.
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We've talked getting Python set up
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so we can run code that we'd write on your machine.
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We've talked about some of the big ideas
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behind programming force code
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what it means to execute source code
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algorithms and even, to a smaller degree, data structures.
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So it's time to start writing code in Python.
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Here's a little bit of Python code
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and we're going to write it in this little environment here.
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What we're going to do, is we're going to start
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from the absolute simplest way that we can explore
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a few basic ideas in Python
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before we get into full-blown
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programs, and editors, and things like that.
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We're going to use this thing called a REPL
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R-E-P-L it stands for, Read. Evaluate. Print. Loop.
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What you do is you type some Python expression in here
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it either gives you an answer
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or if there is no output that doesn't do anything
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and it just evaluates it
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it comes back and it loops around
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and it asks you again
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What do you want to do now? What do you want to do now?
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Real programs are not written this way.
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However, it's the simplest thing
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that we can do to get started.
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In this first chapter
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we're going to work in this Python REPL.
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Afterwards, we're going to put it away
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because they are a lot of disadvantages here.
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For example
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code that we type in here doesn't get saved.
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If we make a mistake
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it's quite hard to edit what we've created in here
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and as long as we're doing complicated things anyway.
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So real programmers
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they don't work here to create programs
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but they do work here to explore little ideas
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and that seems like a great place for us to start.
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This is how it looks if you're on macOS.
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Looks really similar if you're on Linux as well.
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If you're on Windows, it looks a little bit different
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it's going to look like this.
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We're going to go through and do a little bit of setup
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both on macOs and on Windows
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though either of those, you should be all set.
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So don't worry
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we're using one and you're on the other
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we're going to talk about, real quickly
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how to get everything up and going
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get this REPL running the right version
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the right way and so on
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and then we're going to explore
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two core ideas in programming
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variables and reference types
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that's idea 1
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the other one is data types themselves
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like numbers vs. text vs. dates
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that kind of stuff.
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We're going to explore those
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and work with them in this Python REPL
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to get our feet wet and get started
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writing Python code.
