We are going to need 2 pieces of software:
- python
- jupyter
Python is a very nice and useful programming language. It has found use in many places. The greatest thing about it that it has a very simple syntax which translates as it has a very shallow learning curve, and that it has tons of libraries.
Jupyter is the software that will get you interact with the language. For these lectures Jupyter is an IDE and computing environment which allows one to blend text (with a very simple markup language) and live python code/computation within the same document. It is perfect for keeping lab journals, research diary, teaching or even writing blog posts that require a computational content. Jupyter has support for a wide range of languages other than python.
These lectures are jupyter/python notebooks. Github has this nice feature that it renders these lectures without you running these lectures on your local machine.