In this informal bootcamp, intended for folks with no coding or command line experience, I will walk through the process of designing a very basic python script that you can use to query a textual corpus. I will cover software installation, basic interaction on the command line, basic Python syntax and constructs, and show how to put together a script to do some simple text analyses. We also discuss some of the nuances involved in doing text analysis in languages other than English. You will hopefully leave with a basic understanding of Python that will lead you to more advanced analysis and creativity in the future!
If you are a William & Mary student interested in doing research in my digital humanities lab, this is an excellent opportunity to jump start with the knowledge you will need to be an active participant in the lab!
Do note that we will be interacting with our computers at a lower level than you may have done before, and some commands will delete or alter files without asking for confirmation (so please be careful and do so at your own risk)!
The bootcamp stream will be on my YouTube channel
January 18th to the 22nd, 1pm to 3pm Eastern
Test stream from Saturday
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Sample code, demo corpora, and software installation instructions will all appear here in this repository
All you will need for this workshop is a Python distribution, a plain text editor, and your computer's terminal/command prompt
I prefer to use the Anaconda distribtion of Python, as it comes with a lot of very useful libraries that facilitate our analysis
Download Anaconda from here
I like to use VS Code as my plain text editor. Once you've installed Anaconda, you can use the Anacona Navigator to install VS Code. If you prefer something else, there are many other good editors out there (this is not an exhaustive list):
Sublime Text
Atom
Notepad++ (Windows only)
BBEdit (Mac only)
You could also go old school and use Vim or eMacs, but I'd like to avoid dealing with the infamous "How do I exit Vim" issue.
Mac users, your terminal is found in the Utilities folder in Applications.
Windows users, you can use either the command prompt or PowerShell, but I'll be using the command prompt. If you don't want to deal with setting environment variables, you can launch the Anaconda Prompt with the Anaconda Navigator.