Python on the go

I have been trying out some courses on this programming language for the last few weeks and have found it to be an interesting one.

It's less than  20 MB in download size and it is text based but the language itself is quite simple - probably the simplest I have seen so far. I have had to set it as  - use as admin - as it was crashing quite a few times at the beginning.

In Windows, Python is run through Idle. The version that is used in most courses is Python 2.7.  I read that the reason is due to incompatibility of the code of 2.7 in version 3.

https://wiki.python.org/moin/Python2orPython3

 Idle in Windows, is found by clicking  Start , All Programs , look for  the Python 2.7 folder and click on Idle. Programs are usually written in the Idle text editor and saved as .py files before running them.  The .py files can be edited by right clicking on them.(A simple text document (.txt) can also be used by Idle to run the programs.  Idle can save them in the .py files by typing .py at the end of the filename.)

The programs are run by pressing F5. Idle  will usually automatically prompt you to save the file before it runs.

Here are some resources about Python:  (updated 12-7-2015)

Tutorial:-  The Python Tutorial

Books : -
Think Python by Allen B. Downey
 Python for Informatics by Charles Severance - a remixed version of the above book
CS for All by Christine Alvarado (UC San Diego), Zachary Dodds (Harvey Mudd), Geoff Kuenning (Harvey Mudd), Ran Libeskind-Hadas (Harvey Mudd)


Debugging: - Online Python Tutor by Philip Guo

The courses that I have been trying out are also very good. The one from Coursera  goes at a more gentle pace while the other two from edX   seem to have quite a lot of content in them.