Introduction to Programming Using Python

[MUSIC] In this segment, we're gonna be taking a look at our upcoming Introduction to Programming Using Python course. Specifically, what are you gonna learn? What is my expectations for you coming into the course? And then, well, how do you get started? With that said, a couple of those questions are more or less connected. Let's start with, what are my expectations for you? For you, maybe you've programmed a little bit, you have some familiarity with computers. But you just haven't really dug in to the programming world. And you wanna get started, you've heard Python is a great language to start in, and you wanna make sure that you've learned something at the end. You're gonna sit for the MTA 98-381, Introduction to Programming Using Python exam, administrated through Microsoft. This is a great place to start there. My expectations for you are you have some technical prowess but you may have never programmed before. And as a matter of fact, to help you get started kind of lower the barrier to entry, this course goes hand in hand with the practice lab environments that follow the topic areas for the exam. Now, let's go ahead and take a look at the screen here, and I'll show you what I mean. What are some of the things we're gonna learn in the upcoming course? Well, we're gonna be working with primitive data types, learning about assignment statements, converting types, creating lists. Working with if statements, working with operators, for loops, while loops. And well, the list goes on and on. Each one of these labs and if I go into the lab what'll happen is you'll have a little virtual machine that comes up. Now I haven't spun this up so this is kind of going on and on and on. This will bring up an interface inside of my browser that would allow me to access IDLE, which is the environment that we use to run our Python code, to type our Python code, save it, and so forth. You have to take pains to keep a copy for yourself, but you don't have to install anything, which is great. In addition to, on the left-hand side, there are some exercises that go along with this environment. As you can see, well, I have pretty much a Windows machine and if I type idle, I'll have Python 3.6 idle up and running. You can use this both to follow along in the episodes, but also to finish the lab assessments. These are great ways to hear something from me in a different manner than maybe you would read them. You're touching the material twice, which is a great way to retain, understand and fool around with new ideas that you may be exposed to. Now I will tell you, in the upcoming series, I'm not gonna use the lab environment mainly because I want to make sure that the text is large enough for you to see and that I have a little more control over being able to zoom in, save. But besides that, I'm still gonna use IDLE, I'm still using Python 3.6. There may be other versions of Python that pop up here and there with documentation and such. It's not gonna be wholly different, you can follow along but I will be on a Mac OS machine. IDLE will still be exactly the same. So once this gets up and going, you come over here and you'll see, well I need to start doing this, and it gives you pictures, step-by-step guides. Now, what I've done is recorded complementary videos, sometimes giving you a little more insight into the particular exercise. Sometimes supplementing kind of a complimentary video to these exercises. So watch that, go through these, program, program, program, practice, practice, practice. Practice makes permanence, not perfect, if you practice wrong it sometimes goes horribly awry. You're going to have to go through this guide, watch the videos, program on your own, really try to break those down as you prepare for the exam. Now, as you go through here, always remind yourself, I'm ready to go. I can do this. And this is my first touch. There will be times of frustration. But hopefully I'll see you there as we continue our Python journey. But for now, we're gonna go ahead and get out of here. [MUSIC]