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

[zulu]

My IDLE shell thingy has stopped working. When I try to start it, I get "Socket Error: connection refused", and then "IDLE's subprocess didn't make connection. Either IDLE can't start a subprocess or personal firewall software is blocking the connection."

Since I haven't changed anything since five minutes ago when it was working, I don't know what's happening here.

[elz]

Eep. That's on Windows? Googling suggests it's a not uncommon problem. Suggestions seem to be a) making sure it's shut down completely (by checking the running processes or rebooting) and restarting it or b) tinkering with your antivirus software to make sure it's not blocking it.

Alternatively, in the class, I'm sure it makes sense to have everyone using the same tools, which is why they recommend IDLE, but you can write code in any text editor and run it from the command line. Notepad++ is a pretty good option for Windows if IDLE turns out to be more trouble than it's worth.

[zulu]

Thanks for the pointers! I'll continue with my readings and then see what I can do about it.