Workshops/Python for Beginners

Information for our introductory workshops on Python

Things you will Need

UPDATE - all the materials are available on my github account: https://github.com/OniDaito/PythonCourse

You will most definitely need a laptop or other computer that is capable of running pyglet and python. Windows, Linux or OSX is supported for this course. The most important thing you will need is the PythonCourse.zip file which contains all the couse notes, readme files and python exercises we'll be doing.

All the information is held in the README.txt file (so please, really DO read it! ). There are resources, PDFs, notes and many other things in the zip but to make life easy for us all, if you can install python and pyglet before the day, it'd be a great help!

Setting up Your System

There are 4 things you need:

• Python - Either the 2.5 or 2.6.6 vintage. http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.6.6/
• Pyglet - http://www.pyglet.org/download.html
• The course code. This will be refined and released closer to the time.
• A DECENT TEXT EDITOR - We can't stress this enough! No really!

Windows

You'll need a copy of Python. We recommend the 2.6.6 branch installer which comes as an MSI file. Simply double click to install. You can grab it from the Python.org Releases page. We can't use 2.7 yet because the Pyglet library doesn't run yet.

Next you'll need the installer for Pyglet. This comes as an MSI too and you can simply double click and install.

Notepad ++ is pretty much the best text editor on Windows

OSX

Python comes installed as standard but there are a few versions. You'll need to use the python2.5 command in your terminal and make sure you install pyglet for the 2.5 python install. You can grab the OSX DMG from the Pyglet page and install it. It should work straight out of the box.

Under OSX, I find textwrangler to be the best.

Linux

Who can say?! There are several versions of Python for Linux but Pyglet generally works with 2.5 and 2.6 as oppose to 2.7/3.0. Ubuntu may have an install candidate inside apt for pyglet.

Kate or gedit are fine text editors for python (I'm sure there are VI, emacs people out there too, but chances are you already know python anyways)

Resources for the Day

There are a great many resources for Python on the web. Here are a few of the ones I like:

Learning Python in General

• http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide/NonProgrammers
• http://docs.python.org/release/2.6.6/
• http://docs.python.org/py3k/
• http://docs.python.org/
• Learning Python the Hard Way - a great little PDF that is actually quite easy to follow
• Common python pitfalls

Pyglet Related

• http://www.pyglet.org/doc/programming_guide/index.html

Tickets

Get your tickets on the sign-up page.

When?

A 1 day workshop on Sunday 21st November

Where?

Laboratory 24.

What?

A Beginners introduction to Python with extra bits if you want them!

Sunday

• 10.00 – 10.30 : Setup of Laptops with software.
• 10.30 – 13.00 : Workshop on 'Python Bomberman' with examples drawn from the Python Language
• 13.00 – 13.30 : Break
• 13.30 – 17.00 : Final advanced sections of Bomberman and coverage of one or two extra Python areas depending on requests. We can cover Django, pySerial, HTML servers/ Parsing, PyGame and Sockets. We'll aim to have some other instructive examples, so if there's anything you're particularly interested in, click Edit to let us know.

For who?

Anyone!

If you can't program, still come along. The pace will be fast but if you want to start programming for the first time, Python is a great language to learn.

How much?

There is no charge HOWEVER the space survives on donations and member subscriptions. We recommend a voluntary donation of £20 for the day.