Recommendations for intro to python+programming lecture to Humanities MA students

[Akkana Peck]

Chris Angelico writes:
> On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 4:42 AM Nick Sarbicki <nick.a.sarbicki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > RE Conda and distros - I'd forget about them, in my experience you may as
> > well learn to use pip and install what you need that way, in the long term
> 
> Agreed. 

More agreement. Someone at the local makerspace recently tried to
teach a beginning Python class; the first hour and a half lecture
was entirely devoted to trying to get Anaconda installed on
everyone's machines, and most of the people still didn't have it
installed by the end. I heard a lot of the people from the first
lecture gave up and didn't come back for the second lecture because
they still didn't have a working environment. Of the people who did
return, I saw some of them (fairly technical users to begin with, just
not in Python) later struggling with conda updates that went wrong.

Installing Python on Windows isn't trivial, but if you lead them
through each of the steps (hint: be sure not to miss the small
checkbox about adding Python to the path -- you have to scroll down
to the bottom of the options list to see it, and it's not checked by
default) it shouldn't be too bad. Also, have a copy of the installer
available on a USB stick or three unless the lecture hall is
guaranteed to have flawless wi-fi.

Can you get a couple of Windows and Mac using friends (who don't
already have Python) to help you try out the installers before the class?
Or, for Windows, you could try one of these virtualbox images:
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/

> In fact, given the tight context here, I would go even further
> and stick to JUST the standard library - there's already way more in
> there than you need for a single lecture. Maybe just name-drop pip and

For a general Python class I'd agree, but since these are linguists,
it will help to have a linguistics package or two to show how Python
can help them in their work.

That means that if you don't use conda, you should probably have
them create a virtualenv so they can run pip safely.

> > In summary I'd aim to inspire not to teach - so show some basics at the
> > beginning to show how accessible it can be, and then feel free to jump off
> > into advanced python land to showcase what is possible using whatever you
> > are most comfortable with. Essentially show them they can learn python, and
> > then inspire them to want to learn python.
> 
> Absolutely agreed. Your job is not to turn them into programmers. Your
> job is just to inspire them - to show them possibilities, to excite
> them, to empower them to play.

More agreement.

But that's why it's important to have linguistics packages. If you
can give them a simple program that actually does something useful
and relevant to their jobs, that will be a lot more inspiring than
implementing Hello World or Fibonacci numbers or even web scraping.

        ...Akkana