How to prepare for the MCT program
The MCT programme presents a very diverse group of students, which includes include artists, musicians, programmers, teachers, engineers, managers, entrepreneurs, technologists, journalists, etc. Their backgrounds are in a variety of disciplines, such as media science, architecture, computer science, theater, film, music, engineering, and more. You can check out their work on the on the MCT Blog.
MCT students are exposed to a variety of technologies. You may be familiar with some of these from before, while some will be new. We advise new students to have a look at some of the core software technologies and programming languages we are using.
A good starting point is the list of software used in MCT. The list explains the purpose for which the specific software is used, and if you can use an alternative you may be already familiar with. The list also include links to download and install, which we recommend you to do beforehand. Most of these software tools are fairly intuitive and you will learn while using them. For others we included a link to simple video tutorials.
In the MCT programme we use two programming language:
- Python: a general purpose programming language
- Pure Data: an audio-specific visual programming language
- GitHub: an Internet-based collaborative version-control based on Git
Compared to a software application, it will take you a little longer to get used to a new programming languages. If you are new to text-based programming or new to Python we strongly recommend you to follow this online course in preparation for the beginning of the MCT programme. Python is a beginner friendly and easy to learn language. The course is 6 hours long but you can learn most basic concepts just by following the first two hours. These will definitely help you in having a smooth start with the MCT programme. If you want to gain a deeper knowledge of Python language you can follow the first four hours.
This Python online course is based on PyCharm, which is an easy to use Python IDE (Integrated Development Environment). We recommend you to install and use PyCharm for ease of reference.
In the MCT programme, we will often run Python programs in the Jupiter Notebook which you will get by installing Anaconda as described in the list of software.
Visual programming languages, such as Pure Data, are generally easier to use than text-based programming environments. However is you are already very proficient with imperative text-based programming languages, you may find visual programming language a little confusing at the beginning. If you are familiar with Max/MSP you are also familiar with Pure Data as the two environment share a lot of similarities and are conceptually identical (however, small differences exists). The following set of 12 video tutorial are a good starting point to get familiar with Pure Data. We recommend using Pure Data "vanilla" as described in the list of software.
Alternatively, you can follow this tutorial or explore the comprehensive list of tutorials on the Pure Data website.
Depending on your background, it may take a little bit longer to get familiar with Github and digest key concepts of Git (a version control system). If you are new to Git and GitHub, we recommend you to follow this set of video tutorials and experiment key concepts crating and playing around with your own repository. We recommend you to install Github Desktop and/or Git (command line), as well as creating an account on GitHub beforehand, as described in the list of software. During the programme you will often create blog posts on the The MCT Blog which is based on GitHub Pages. This require you to pull, commit and push contents to a GitHub repository.
