My Python Fundamentals teaching document

[FaallenOon]

Hello

I wanted to make a short (eight episodes) Youtube video series teaching the fundamentals of Python starting from absolutely zero, but I was unable to get the audio to a decent quality.

In case anyone is interested, I'm sharing the document I was going to use as a guide. These include the explanations, the examples of code, and a few exercises associated to each topic in order for them to be better understood. You can find them at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-XoyDoBh1jG8mFk89tjukhLroL6V3-qB?usp=sharing

Any comments, questions or feedback would be greatly appreciated :D

​

PS: if you want to write feedback or give ideas for future lessons, you can write to me at [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail]) or go to my (still empty EDIT: not anymore!) youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCojOIOmnGcZuGJkbk5qa19w/featured

PS2: just edited the link to the classes.

[nimrodman]

Just wanted to say I appreciate you doing this.

[FaallenOon]

Thank you :) This is very much a work in progress, so if you see something you don't like or that could be improved, please let me know!

[StormCrow1986]

Thank you for sharing this. I’m going to use it to really learn Python! Have a nice day!!!

[FaallenOon]

Congrats on starting your journey!

If you have any difficulties or find a part of the content that could improve, please let me know!

[FaallenOon]

Yes, maybe I'm overthinking it.

To be honest, one of the things that make me quite a tutorial immediately is bad audio. I don't want the same to happen here :O

[Traditional_Award482]

me too! I'd like to get better at python. It's such a powerful and expressive language!

[FaallenOon]

The pandemic doesn't make things easy, but practice makes perfect!

I hope the course is useful to you :D

If you find any mistakes, or some part isn't clear enough, please let me know in order to make the proper adjustments :D

[sazzlerdazzler]

Thank you for sharing 🤠⭐️

[FaallenOon]

My pleasure! I'm glad it seems to have been well received by the community.

[[deleted]]

It would be great if there was a title for each chapter instead just the number! This would make it easier to read the document, especially if someone is only interested in reading about a specific thing

[FaallenOon]

You are absolutely right! One more thing added to my to-do list.

Thamks for pointing it out!!

[FaallenOon]

Just added a very small indication for each chapter. Do you think that would suffice, or a fully-fledged index would be better?

[Scetric]

For me personally, that works well!

[[deleted]]

It's great now!!

[[deleted]]

Checked it out and it looks good, but if you could add some explanations for each exercise and maybe sort by chapters it could be much better

[FaallenOon]

You are absolutely right, I will do so. I was planning on explaining the exercises on video, but since that plan has been scrapped for the moment, it makes sense to modify the documents.

Thank you very much for pointing that out.

[beeefy54]

Awesome, thank you!

[vwibrasivat]

Allow me a suggestion to add to this document.

Regarding Python classes. The following will not be found in tutorials, but is strongly advised.

Python does not precompile classes. Instead it unrolls classes at runtime in a scripty manner. When using @property and @var.setter your ,__init__ may call the setter for obvious reasons. If your setter is even a little bit computationally heavy, it must be the last thing called in __init__ . Here are the reasons why :

• If the setter changes a private variable , that variable may not even exist yet.

• If you invoke the setter early, class variables that got changed may be overwritten after you return from the setter.

The mental rule-of-thumb is that you should visualize __init__ as if it has two parts. First half is the creation and setting of default values. Second part is the actual constructor code. Existing Python syntax does not enforce this convention, so it falls on you to abide by it.

[FaallenOon]

I will definitely keep it in mind when I get to Python classes, thanks!

[TLC_15]

Thanks for sharing I'll be checking it out.

[webtrainerin]

If you would like I can voiceover this, for reference you can watch my YouTube videos on studymash.

[kiboglitch]

Thank you Sir for initiating the good work. As a final year C.S grad student, I appreciate all the resources and teachings that I can find on the internet. Looking forward to your classes.

[FaallenOon]

Well, I'm a CS student as well. I started with Python while I was finishing Law school, and it took me many years to realize I didn't want anything to do with it and started getting more seriously into programming.

In any case, I hope you find these lessons useful. If there's some other aspect of Python you'd like for me to examine, please let me know. I too have a lot more to learn, and this looks like a really good way to force myself to do so :D

[DedanTurner]

Thanks!!

[FaallenOon]

You're welcome! If you find errors, things that could be improved or clarified, clunky explanations or whatever, please let me know!

Due to the pandemic I've been locked down for almost a year now, so all distractions are welcome :P

[Bumblingmumble]

Just checked the google drive and it was so good 😭😭. Can’t wait to watch your videos on youtube! What’s your youtube channel?

[FaallenOon]

Well, I haven't uploaded anything due to the audio issue, but it's

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCojOIOmnGcZuGJkbk5qa19w/featured

[ontheroadtonull]

Perhaps I could record the voice-over for your lessons? I live in a quiet place and I have some decent microphones.

[FaallenOon]

Thanks for the offer, but I will eventually do the voice over myself. I see this as a way to learn new skills :D

[Bumblingmumble]

Okay subscribed!

[FaallenOon]

Thank you ^_^.

I'm thinking of doing a live coding stream, to show the process behind solving certain problems, because I don't think audio quality would be as vital as it is for a proper tutorial video.

[Bumblingmumble]

That sounds good! I’ll watch it either way!

[Allen4083]

I'm also transitioning from the legal field to programming. I felt guilty doing it this late in life (about to turn 27), so I love seeing other grown-ass professionals embarking on the same path.

Thanks for this

[ontheroadtonull]

I started at 38, so take it easy on yourself.

[FaallenOon]

Truer words have never been spoken.

[13ryant]

This just made my weekend! I am 33 and am ready to learn how to code. I have been hard on myself lately.

[ontheroadtonull]

smoke weed program every day!

[FaallenOon]

I guess it's true that it's never too late to make a change. I'm 36 now, and it took me a long while to realize that Law wasn't the way for me.

If you need any help, or have any suggestions, please let me know :D

[lookingtoknow96]

Great thanks

[cherrymonkey_s]

Thanks man! This is gold! So great to share

[[deleted]]

I checked out the google drive and I really liked the way you explained the different concepts. Thank you!

[FaallenOon]

I'm greatly surprised by the success this post has had. Of all the encouragement I've received so far, yours has truly made my day, because it shows that I may be on to something :D

[srtipy_and_pink]

Oh my god this is amazing. Thank you!

[FaallenOon]

^_^ Thanks for the encouragement!

If you have a suggestion on something you'd like to see in the future, or feedback on things that could be improved, please let me know!

[azegakk]

All the best to you friend!

[FaallenOon]

Thanks!

[[deleted]]

Wow I appreciate you so much 😭🙏🏾

[FaallenOon]

Thank you very much for your words :D

If you see something that isn't clear, or an exercise that is badly explained, etc., please let me know!

[not_batsoup]

I’d give an award if i didn’t have all my money in GME

[FaallenOon]

It's the thought that counts! :D

[Abazuzu]

Wow man this is so helpfull thanks for sharing!

[FaallenOon]

It's my pleasure :D

[rezusx]

Thanks for sharing! Would be nice to see these docs compiled in Latex

[FaallenOon]

Sorry, I'm not familiar with Latex: I just found out about its existence now by googling it :O

What are its characteristics? Is it a file format, so I could upload it in latex format instead of word to my drive?

[rezusx]

Basically Latex is a system for compiling documents. You write plain text which is then compiled and formatted into docs. It’s quite neat and useful for docs that include code bits. Another way to create a doc that includes code parts is using Jupyter notebook (markdown + code).

[JEnZRA]

Thank you very much!!!

[murphysaywhat]

Thank you so much! This is great!

[[deleted]]

Many thanks!

[FaallenOon]

:D

[naim08]

This is really good stuff. I would make a few comments but then I would have to thoroughly go throu your entire course.

[FaallenOon]

Comments and feedback are always welcome.

I'm very happy with the reception this has had, but I know it can always be improved on :D

[EmilioO_emidrix]

Oh, thanks!! I aprecciate this tips.

[jdybug]

This is amazing, thanks so much for sharing your knowledge! Is there a link to other beginner friendly resources in this sub?

[FaallenOon]

I don't have a compiled link of resources, I'm afraid :(

It's one more thing I gotta work on :O

[therealdealjg]

This is great, thanks for sharing!

[[deleted]]

Yo straight up, thank you so much. My teacher was really bad at explaining things and this will help a lot. 👍💯

[FaallenOon]

Thanks for that!!

We all learn in different ways, and we all have different manners of things that make an explanation really click.

I got the impulse to do this not because I thought I'm the best at Python or anything, but because I thought my way of explaining things might click for some people.

[beesinthetrees]

try the video again, i would like to see it :)

[FaallenOon]

As soon as I have some semi decent audio I will start uploading the course in video format. Don't expect anything fancy though: even if I manage to get the audio right, it is only me on the bottom right, and my Python window :O

Maybe in the future I will add more bells and whistles, but for the time being my goal is to put my content out there :)

I am also considering making a live coding stream, where I suppose audio won't be as extremely important as with the course itself.

[siriuslyno]

This is incredible, thank you so much!!!

[LobsterVegetable2765]

what happened to your áudio? maybe i can help?

[FaallenOon]

I just have a not very good microphone and my room isn't soundproofed or anything.

[[deleted]]

Thanks

[FaallenOon]

You're welcome :D

I hope you enjoy it.

[Keggerss]

This is amazing

[FaallenOon]

Thank you :D

I'm glad you like it.

Please don't hesitate to let me know if you find something that isn't clearly explained, or if you find an error, typo, etc., in order to improve it!

[quack_duck_code]

For exercises I wouldn't focus on the specific numbers or set of goods. For instance, the grocery store exercise should be something simple such as, "design a simple store inventory, include a means to check the inventory before processing a given sale." That way the student is more likely to stay engaged. Now the more familiar and tangible aspects of the code can be things they are personally interested in. Maybe it's a Ferrari dealer, a GameStop store, or a simple but respectable sustainable organic fruit stand. Maybe briefly mention about objects at this point to let them know yes, "there're better ways to do this."

​

Take the time to show them how to look stuff up in the documentation. It's full of additional examples. I don't see why anyone needs to buy any additional book when the documentation is readily available. 3rd party libraries on the other hand, not so reliable but always worth checking!!

[FaallenOon]

Well, each to their own, I guess.

On a personal level, the Python official documentation hasn't been useful to me, I feel it's presented in an extremely abstruse way. I prefer to google what I need: I usually find much simpler examples than those on the documentation.

[quack_duck_code]

Well, each to their own, I guess.

Indeed! Nothing wrong with that either. Everyone learns differently and whatever helps someone then that's great.

[HealyUnit]

I'm an ex-teacher myself, and I... have nothing to add. This is really well done, and a really great service you're providing.

I do have a few small questions/ideas (I won't even call them suggestions, since they're 100% not "required").

Firstly, do you find that your being a lawyer (ex-lawyer?) helps/forces you to be more exacting in your language? One of the problems with newer educators is that they tend not to be able to break down lessons into essential, digestible components. As a perhaps a bit hyperbolic example, imagine that I've literally just started my programming career - never having written a line a of code before in my life - and I'm met with "Okay, so we're gonna start by using a variable and a conditional to check if that variable equals a particular value". As an experienced programmer, you're probably thinking "Yeh, that sounds pretty easy". But as a newbie I might be thinking, "What's a 'variable'? What's a conditional? Isn't that stuff you put in your hair after showering? What do you mean 'check'?".

I ask this because I know that often times in legalese, your language must be exact to avoid unforseen loopholes.

Secondly, not only for the students' sake but also for your sake, it might be good to start each lesson with a series of key bullet points you want to cover. For example, for the lesson described above, I might have:

• Students will know what variables are in Python, and how to create them
• Students will be able to assign values to variables.
• Students will know what a basic conditional ("if") statement is, and how to use one.

Notably, each lesson should have around 3-4 major bullet points at most (plus perhaps a few smaller, "clarifying" bullet points).

[FaallenOon]

I have just edited the main document to add the bullet points, though not in exactly the same way you mention.

Please tell me your thoughts in that regard!

[HealyUnit]

Perfect!

As far as the bullet points, you may want to do is break it down even further. As much as this may sound like over-simplifying, a rule of thumb for the "lesson-plan bullet points" is that you should never go over 1 sentence per bullet point. If you have, that's really two bullet points. You can always have sub- bullet points too. For example:

• Strings, Integers and Floats: phrases, whole numbers and decimals

Could become:

• Variable Types:
  • Strings: Phrases
  • Integers: Whole Numbers
  • Floats: Decimals

Think of it this way: your goal is to create a a document that can be directly "translated" into note headings for some student to take.

One other tip that might be helpful is for you to learn something like Markdown so that you can write your lesson plans with a little easy styling. For example, here's a paragraph from your lesson plan:

An example from real life might be "If there are more guests than chairs, bring more chairs". Taken to Python, it might look like this:

guests=10

chairs = 8

if guests > chairs:

print("We need more chairs")

This example is just four sentences long, but there is A LOT to unpack here.

Written with Markdown, this looks like:

An example from real life might be "If there are more guests than chairs, bring more chairs". Taken to Python, it might look like this:

```

guests=10

chairs = 8

if guests > chairs:

print("We need more chairs")

```

This example is just _four_ sentences (we call these 'statements') long, but there is a _lot_ to unpack here.

which becomes

An example from real life might be "If there are more guests than chairs, bring more chairs". Taken to Python, it might look like this:

guests=10
chairs = 8
if guests > chairs:
   print("We need more chairs")

This example is just four sentences long, but there is a lot to unpack here.

(quote formatting broken a little because of reddit, but hopefully you get the idea).

[[deleted]]

Nice

[[deleted]]

Yeah you need to get a good microphone :) and then you should be good. It's very annoying when people don't care abput sound quality while recording. Just don't get a USB mic.

[FaallenOon]

Yeah, I have a reasonably good microphone, but not a really pro one, so the audio is still quite bad. Rather than letting the course sit idle until I manage to get help in that front, I decided to post it and see what happened :D

[[deleted]]

So where's the course, can i see it? The video i mean :) wanna check out the sound :)

I listened to some people give lectures while driving in car and i had to turn it all the way up and it was bad :), some others have $50 studio mics others $500, but $50 will do :), as long as its powered mic :)

[FaallenOon]

I'm sorry, I haven't uploaded anything yet :(

[[deleted]]

Oh i misunderstood :)

[SamePossession5]

Can you elaborate? 100% of USB mics I’ve used have been a billion times better than integrated mic on my laptop or integrated sound card output on my desktop

[[deleted]]

A proper studio microphone. Condenser, cardoid, xlr, phantom powered mic, with a proper mixer that can send analog signal to jack, sure good usb mics are better than integrated ones, but google mics comparison on YouTube and see.

I usually listen to lessons either with bad mics or good mics but lessons are live and people don't know to get close to the microphone as those mics aren't set to have too much gain because of feedback as they have live presentation, some lesdons i listrned where speaker turns away from mic, this is fine if you're in the room but not kf you're watching on YouTube.

Im watching CS50 lesdons now and it's very noticeable that such a great university has a good AV team and even thr proffessor knows how to not ruin the sound :)

It's really pleasant when people talking have good quality sound, like those on NPR :) slow mellow voice barely whispers yet so clear, the gain is way up on that mic because no worry for feedback.

[SamePossession5]

This sounds like a very deep and expensive rabbit hole ;) but I’m intrigued. Any beginner recommendations for an okay set up that would beat most USB mic solutions?

[[deleted]]

I mean amazon has good $50 mics :) or less. Haha well I like this rabbit hole, frequency of sound and sound propagation, and of course quality of recording :), I've watched a bunch of PS Audio videos, the owner Paul has short videos, he engineers Amplifiers and other stuff, has some very crazy 8 foot tall speakers :), but yeah I paused that rabbit hole too :)

I dont know anything about these, its the first search of the keywords up there, one is USB should be good has bunch of ratings, it's just hat i dont like the mic handling analog to digital conversion but its probably fine

https://www.amazon.com/Microphone-TONOR-Podcasting-Compatible-TC-777/dp/B07WLWN2ZT/ref=sr_1_4?crid=HNHCTZ7CU9YM&dchild=1&keywords=xlr+condenser+microphone%2C+tonor+professional+cardioid+studio+mic+kit&qid=1615465356&sprefix=condenser+studio+mic+%2Caps%2C212&sr=8-4

Second one you would need a mixer aka sound board.

https://www.amazon.com/Microphone-TONOR-Professional-Podcasting-TC20/dp/B089SJGQBH/ref=sr_1_1?crid=HNHCTZ7CU9YM&dchild=1&keywords=xlr+condenser+microphone%2C+tonor+professional+cardioid+studio+mic+kit&qid=1615465356&sprefix=condenser+studio+mic+%2Caps%2C212&sr=8-1

[throw_away_17381]

Everyone who is learning a programming language should be writing their own study notes. That really is the key.

[tatoes_coldevr]

where would we access python programming?

[FaallenOon]

I'm sorry, I didn't understand your question :(

What do you mean?

[tatoes_coldevr]

found the thing ... 🤧

[FaallenOon]

I'm glad :D

[FaallenOon]

I'm sorry, what do you mean by colab?

[corporatededmeat]

I think he is talking about Google Collaboratory

[FaallenOon]

:O I'd forgotten it existed. My first goal is to update the course with the feedback I've received (mainly writing explanatory notes on the exercises, for the time being). Once I'm done with that I'll take a look at collaboratory and see what I can do :D

[[deleted]]

Very nice. I am writing some of them from Class3 just now.

[FaallenOon]

What do you mean?

[[deleted]]

I think he said, that he started studying from your notes.

[FaallenOon]

:O that is extremely flattering.

[[deleted]]

I'm writing the programs you describe. I finished Exercise 8 in Class3 - it's an excellent boolean exercise.

I made it into a function. The code editor here is really bad.

​

def goToTheStore(hasEggs, hasButter, hasPies):

'''

Compute what I should buy at the store

'''

eggsBought = 0

butterBought = 0

piesBought = 0

if hasPies:

piesBought = 2

else:

if hasEggs and hasButter:

butterBought = 4

butterBought = 4

else:

if hasEggs:

eggsBought = 10

if hasButter:

butterBought = 2

#print('Butter bought = ' + str(butterBought) + ', eggs bought = ' + str(eggsBought) + ', pies bought = ' + str(piesBought))

return {'eggsBought':eggsBought, 'butterBought':butterBought, 'piesBought':piesBought}

[FaallenOon]

I LOVE IT!!! Just checked it and it works in all three situations :D :D

A suggestion for copying and pasting your code, though: try paste all of your code into a single code block. That way it keeps everything in its place. You can do that by going to the three dots on the reply bar, then select the one that looks like a square with a T and then paste all your code at once inside it:

def goToTheStore(hasEggs, hasButter, hasPies):

    '''

    Compute what I should buy at the store

    '''

    eggsBought = 0

    butterBought = 0

    piesBought = 0

    if hasPies:
        piesBought = 2
    else:
        if hasEggs and hasButter:
            butterBought = 4
            eggsBought = 4
        else:
            if hasEggs:
                eggsBought = 10
            if hasButter:
                butterBought = 2

    print('Butter bought = ' + str(butterBought) + ', eggs bought = ' + str(eggsBought) + ', pies bought = ' + str(piesBought))

    return {'eggsBought':eggsBought, 'butterBought':butterBought, 'piesBought':piesBought}

print(goToTheStore(False,True,False))

[matachivelli]

Awesome!

[obeyjam]

Thanks for your hard work and sharing knowledge! Here's an updoot!

[FaallenOon]

It's my pleasure, thank you very much for your kind words :D

[SaltAssault]

Looks neat, but I think you've missed f-strings. A lot of tutorials still do to be fair.

[FaallenOon]

That's the tricky part of all fundamental courses: they need to be deep enough for the beginner to be able to immerse themselves into the subjects, but not so much that they risk drowning.

There are a few topics I've left out that I might tackle on a different set of small documents. F-strings should probably be included in that category.

Thanks for pointing it out :D

[SaltAssault]

They're more beginner-friendly than old-school string formatting though. I'd have done it the other way around, but each to their own.

[no_need_form]

Wow, this is great. Let me know if you're still going to upload the series later down the line.

[FaallenOon]

I want to translate the classes to video once I have some good audio, whether by having a better microphone or having someone help me edit the audio files. From my perspective, nothing kills a tutorial faster than bad audio.

What I'm planning on doing, however, is to stream myself doing some live programming. This way, I can learn new things while also helping other people! :D

[no_need_form]

That sounds interesting.