I decided lately that I wished to study extra Python so I may enhance my educational abilities and broaden the horizons of my college students. In the method, I’ve found these wonderful sources which have me studying new code and enhancing my understanding of Python on the whole.
1. Teach your children to code
I started the Python journey about seven years in the past once I found connections between Apple LOGO and the Turtle module in Python. The Linux laptop I used to be utilizing on the time defaulted to Python 2.7, and I quickly found that I wished to make use of Python 3. I managed to get it put in and started writing some easy applications utilizing the Turtle module. After studying Dr. Bryson Payne’s Teach Your Kids to Code, I spotted there was much more to Python than simply Turtle. That’s once I put in IDLE.
2. IDLE
Working with IDLE, the interactive interface improved my expertise and made me assured sufficient to think about instructing Python to college students. I volunteered to assist a bunch of home-schooled kids in my group and shortly discovered myself instructing a category of sixteen! I’m glad their mother and father stayed and agreed to be my assistants, in any other case I believe I’d have been overwhelmed. The expertise whetted my urge for food to study extra so I may educate extra.
3. Mu Editor
The following spring in 2018 I attended PyConUS. I listened to a chat by Nicholas Tollervey, a center college instructor, who had written a Python growth surroundings for school-age kids. The Mu editor has a linter constructed into it, which helped me to see the place my errors in programming have been. Mu helped me enhance my coding abilities, and I used to be capable of share that with college students, who benefitted as properly.
As my confidence and expertise grew, I grew to become desperate to share the Python journey with nonetheless extra college students. I co-wrote a grant the next yr to show a category that used Raspberry Pi 4 computer systems and Python. The pandemic interrupted that have. In the interim, the Raspberry Pi Foundation launched the Pi 400. In the spring of 2021, I used the supplies I had developed the earlier yr and a beneficiant grant from an area library to teach two groups of scholars learn how to program. That occasion was so profitable that it was repeated this yr.
4. Codium
Several years in the past, I realized that Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code is an open supply code editor that can be utilized on Linux. One of the features of my Python studying journey that had eluded me till lately was learn how to arrange and use a digital surroundings for Python programming, which had been steered when utilizing VS Code. My questions have been answered right here on Opensource.com in an article about venv, and that opened the door to studying learn how to arrange and configure Python digital environments on my Linux laptop. Around the identical time, I discovered Codium, a group venture constructed round VS Code.
Now I need to share the VS Codium expertise with my college students and open their understanding of Python past the Turtle module. This zest for studying has me in search of coaching sources which might be open supply and freely accessible on the web.
5. Python gently defined
The e-book Automate the Boring Stuff with Python by Al Sweigart has lengthy been a favourite of mine. Now, the creator has launched Python Programming Exercises, Gently Explained. Both books can be found on-line free of charge and are overtly licensed with Creative Commons license.
6. Python for everybody
Dr. Charles Severance launched Python for Everyone in 2017, which I extremely advocate. He offers “bite size” classes for aspiring programmers like me. The code for the course is offered on GitHub, so you may obtain it and set up it by yourself laptop or college community.
7. Python movies
Recently I realized that Opensource.com alumnus Jay LaCroix has a superb sequence of twenty-eight movies accessible free of charge on YouTube that start with Python fundamentals and span the gamut of a strong introduction to Python programming. Best of all, he makes use of a Linux laptop, so his classes are particularly acceptable for a Linux programming surroundings. One of the takeaways from these movies is studying to make use of nano as a programming surroundings, and it’s included by default in most Linux distributions.
Your studying path
These seven sources have helped me develop as a programmer, and it’s all open supply and accessible to share with others. How have you ever been honing your programming abilities? What would you wish to share? Let us know within the feedback.