To start getting our heads to think more programmatically, we will start with scratch, a free software built to learn the ideas behind coding from the great people at MIT. linked here.
To start, I would advise you to create a project and play around.
If you get stuck, MIT put out a couple tutorial videos here
While playing around, it is advised to use blocks from the control section, this will help you create more powerful animations.
For all systems this tutorial should come in handy if you get stuck.
Before you start, you may want to read up on a bash primer, or just learn the basic commands.
here is a bash reference. Of course you do not have to know all of them, but some of them you will use more then others, such as: cd, ls, mkdir, find.
Python usually comes installed on these operating systems. To check, open your applications and search for terminal. Once it is opened type
python --versionYou should see something like: 2.7.11
If not, you can download python here
Google has put out a setup page for python also, linked here
For mac, a great package manager to have is homebrew, download and instalation is advised.
Before you start, we will be using the command line, so reading up on a command line reference is advised. You don't need to learn all the commands, just some of the more useful ones (such as cd, dir, find, help, md, move, path)
You can test to see if python is install on your machine opening the cmd application and typing: python --version
if you dont get back a version such as: 2.7.11, then you need to download and install it here
Google has put out a setup page for python also, linked here
A text editor is a program that will allow a user to edit text. When you program, you will usually want to use a text editor with a certain text format. For example, when you use microsoft word, the document ends with .doc, you might have seen .pdf, .jpg, .gif or various others, for python we use .py.
Sublime text is a great editor that uses colors and auto complete to make coding easier for the user and better overall experience. You can download it here.
After you download sublime (or you can use any text editor) open a new file and save it as: helloworld.py in the documents
On the first line write:
print("Hello World!")Save the file and open your terminal/command line. Using your appropriate commands (for windows and *unix use: cd ), change into the directory where your file is saved.
This:
cd documents Should work, but you might need to use ls/dir to help find the documents folder. Once you changed into the documents directory write:
python helloworld.pyWhich if you have done everything correctly, should write to the screen: Hello World!