The introduction

[tommeagher]

I added a few things today.

Here's the URL for the slide deck I put together for the beginning of the class: http://bit.ly/intropycar14

I think we can sprint through this piece. Just go round the room and introduce ourselves and set expectations for the day. I thought having the first hands-on task of the day being "import this" would be a good way to get people into it. So much of the Zen of Python I think really will speak to the reporters in the room.

After that, I thought we'd do a mad dash through the basics of variables and elementary types, saying as we did so that we'd be repeating these concepts over and over through the day. I did it as an iPython notebook on Wakari. As the students type each line, I can just press the run button and show the output and talk about each one.

The big problem I'm wrestling with at this point is this: I don't think we can do all of this in a half-hour. So, should I trim down the first lesson and we try to work all those ideas into the projects? Or should we adjust the timing of the day to make more time for this piece of it? What do you think?

Any and all feedback and suggestions will be much appreciated.

Thanks!

[tommeagher]

After Chris added his extra steps, I just moved that IPython notebook to the takehome/ dir. People can play with it on their own. His new steps addressed a lot of the concepts in a more organic way.

If this slide deck is OK with everyone, I'll go ahead and close this issue too, and we can move on to lessons 2-4 and the take home materials.

[kevinschaul]

Looks great, Tom.

As for the intro notebook, I agree that it may be a bit much for the first half-hour, but it's all so fundamentally important. Some things that I think could wait for later sessions (if we do want to trim):

• immutability of strings
• dir()
• string + number and other type casting stuff