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

[Göktuğ Kayaalp]

On 2019-11-20 13:29 -07, Akkana Peck <akkana at shallowsky.com> wrote:
> 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.

Wow.  This was good to know, thanks a lot!

> 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.

Again, great tip, thanks!

> 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/

I’ve just asked my brother to try it out for me.  Later on, I’ll try
with my friends.

Thanks a lot for the link, I’ll try it out.

Cheers,

        -gk.


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İ. Göktuğ Kayaalp	<https://www.gkayaalp.com/>
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