This workshop content will introduce you to the basics of Python and lead you to completing your first Python project! The content has been collated from a variety of sources and leads participants through the process of using Visual Studio Code to developer and execute Python code. This workshop also explores the utilisation of the Live Share extension for Visual Studio Code so that participants can program together in a team remotely towards a final challenge!
This workshop has been designed with accessibility in mind, please take a minute to read through the considerations:
The Edge 'Read Aloud' functionality is compatible with these README files as well as the Jupyter Notebooks (when run in the browser; keep an eye out in the instructions to see how to do this). All content has also been converted to PDFs, again so the 'Read Aloud' functionality can be used.
Visual Studio Code is home to a large range of accessibility considerations including the ability to zoom in and out - https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/accessibility
To make the most of the time allotted for the workshop, we kindly request that all participants attend having already installed Visual Studio Code as well as the following extensions. Below are links to the downloads:
Visual Studio Code - https://code.visualstudio.com/download
Live Share extension - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MS-vsliveshare.vsliveshare-pack
Python extension - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-python.python
Jupyter extension - https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-toolsai.jupyter
We also kindly request that participants have a GitHub account for ease of accessing the code for the workshop.
As mentioned in the overview, the aim of this workshop is to walk participants through the basics of Python! This includes data types, variables, conditional statements, reading and processing command line inputs and writing back to the command line.
This workshop goes off the basis that participants have limited to no exposure to the language or the features so don't worry about being overwhelmed at the start!
The content of this workshop is broken down into modules, each of which has a selection of notebooks that will contain the learning material. The final module contains a selection of programming challenges so that participants can build a small application using the new skills they have learnt.
Once you have downloaded the pre-requisites and read through this initial guide, make your way over to module 1 and follow the setup instructions there to get Python installed!
Happy coding!
~ Ethan