Early-bird thread

[elz]

Welcome, everybody! On request, we're going to start with Lecture 1 next Monday, 11/9. However, there's quite a bit of reading associated with the first three lectures - here's what it says at the site:

Lectures 1-3

• Introduction: Chapter 1 of How to Think Like a Computer Scientist


• Variables and statements: Chapter 2 of How to Think Like a Computer Scientist


• Strings: Variables and strings section of Python Programming (also, the
  strings section)


• Python variables are names: Other languages have "variables", from Code Like A Pythonista: Idiomatic Python


• For PS0: Input/output section of Python Programming


• Conditionals: Chapter 4 of How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (through section 4.8), and the conditional statements section of Python Programming


• Iteration: Loops section of Python Programming


• Tuples: Tuples section from Dive Into Python and the tuples and sequences section of the Python Tutorial


• More on traversing and slicing strings: Chapter 7 of How to Think Like a Computer Scientist

You may want to wait until you've got more context, but if you want to start in on any reading or material this week, here's a place to talk about it!

Comments

[yhlee]

Cautionary note to anyone else who foolishly downloaded Python 3.1.1 (short version is I had it d/l'd for another purpose, before I heard of this comm, and thought, How different can it be? *hollow laughter*): there are enough syntax differences between 2.6.4 and 3.1.1 that a bunch of examples won't work as written. All this just to say, stick with 2.6.4. I am currently having to unlearn a bunch of syntax (I eventually gave up and installed 2.6.4). :-D