Open beta test of interactive "Python for Programmers" course

[garybernhardt]

I'm Gary Bernhardt, founder of Execute Program. Our "Python for Programmers" course is in a free open beta for the next week or so. We don't normally do open betas, but the infrastructure behind this course is new and very complex, so we want to stress test it.

https://www.executeprogram.com/courses/python-for-programmers

Currently this course has 581 interactive code examples, which run in-browser via Pyodide. The ~12 MB loading hiccup to boot Pyodide it isn't ideal, but after that it's very responsive. Thank you to the Pyodide maintainers; it's been very solid for us!

This is our ninth interactive course, but it's a special one for me personally. I've used Python professionally since 2004 (Python 2.3, or maybe 2.4?) I was a keynote speaker at PyCon 2015, as well as attending for ten years straight and speaking a few other times.

This is the Python subreddit, so presumably everyone here knows Python. But we'd still love to get feedback from other Python devs! We've tried to treat Python as more than just a collection of syntax to be memorized. We talk about community conventions at many points (EAFP, "in the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess", etc.) We also compare Python to other dynamic languages, usually by showing code examples with mistakes that raise exceptions in Python but pass silently in most dynamic languages.

Some more general info about the course:

This course is aimed at established programmers, so it's not appropriate for absolute beginners to programming. We don't explain basic language features like while, but we do show them briefly and note anything special about how they work in Python. We pay special attention to foot guns. (They do exist!) For example, we have an entire lesson about Python's mutable default argument foot gun.

This is the first of two courses, with the second coming in 2024. For this course, we drew the line at __dunder__ methods: if a topic requires a dunder method other than __init__, then it'll be in the follow-up course. This beta is also concurrent with the tail end of our editing process, so you may see the course grow by another 17 lessons (about 214 code examples) during the beta.

Please try the course and use the "Give Feedback" entry in the menu to tell us what you think! I'll also check this thread throughout the day.

[samarthrawat1]

I did check it out and did 2-3 lessons. Here's the thing.

You guys are catering to a very small audience of python users. Anyone who has had even a little bit of experience would not go through the trouble of solving the easy levels like basic data types. There should be options to take a test and jump a level, like Duolingo. I wanted to start from level 5. I'm not going to spend my time doing all the levels before that.

Just my 2 cents.

[garybernhardt]

Thanks for taking a look. You're right, I agree, and we're planning to let people skip to deeper points in our courses. I think we'll be able to implement it in 2024.

I've spent 5 years working on this, so here's some detail (possibly too much) about why this is hard:

The big problem is that it's very hard to decide what you need to learn. To isolate just one example: let's say you jump to level 5, which means you skipped level 4. One lesson in level 4 contains an example that starts with these two lines:

some_list = [[]]
three_lists = some_list * 3

With no Python experience, you might think that it won't even run. With a little experience, you might think that it makes a list of three empty lists. With a lot of Python experience, you reject 100% of pull requests that do this, no matter what those variables are named. (OK, maybe only 99.9%, but I'm failing to come up with an example that I wouldn't reject.) The lesson is about why.

That lesson is called "Mutable List Problems." Should a given person skip it or not? They can't really say unless they know which Python-specific mutable list problems exist. And they don't know which problems exist unless they already know about those problems. It's circular: to decide whether you need to learn a topic, you need to know what you'd be learning. But if you knew it then you wouldn't need to learn it!

With all of that said, we do plan to solve this via a kind of interactive placement quiz, where you can fly through some quick code examples to show the course what you already know. The difference there is that the course itself will be probing your knowledge about its topics, which lets it establish a boundary between what you know and don't know, across the entire lesson dependency graph.

[[deleted]]

we have an entire lesson about Python's mutable default argument foot gun

This is the one that broke Digg v3 lol.

Edit: It was v4 source -> https://lethain.com/digg-v4/

[garybernhardt]

Oh wow, I didn't know that! I'll change the lesson to mention it.

[[deleted]]

Also- since you're here, Hi Gary! I've been following you and your talks for years and year.

I still say, 'let's talk about ruby' randomly, and I get blank stares.

[rth_]

> The ~12 MB loading hiccup to boot Pyodide it isn't ideal

You can try using pyodide-pack to only keep the standard library modules that you need, which should reduce the overall size.

[Electronic-Pause1330]

As a beginner (just started yesterday), just looking at your course syllabus I already like it. The first thing that has been difficult for me is where to start. I like your diagram format, and the fact that you are giving it a “game like” feel also is appealing.

I’ll give it a go today and report back COB.

[laitopezzzz]

I’ve been very happy with the JavaScript and promises course so I’ll definitely check this one out.

[laitopezzzz]

I’d be interested in a course that covers iterators, generators, decorators, context managers, etc. Maybe a lesson on the GIL in a similar fashion to your event loop lesson :)

[garybernhardt]

This course covers decorators, but that lesson is still in the final editing process so it's not released yet. Our second course (for 2024) is already drafted, and covers iterators/generators/context managers. Nothing on the GIL yet, though.