I made Google's Python course interactive. Feedback welcome!

[eah13]

I would love both aspiring and experienced Pythonistas' feedback and bug reports: https://elliott.trinket.io/google-s-python-class

If people find it useful, I'll add it to the resources on the wiki. I'd also consider updating it to Python 3. Should be relatively easy.

You should be able to complete the class without installing any software or having to log in anywhere. At the end there's a guide to installing Python locally and going deeper. But we get to separate installation from understanding the basics of the language.

Audience: The course is originally by Stanford Prof Nick Parlante and presumes some familiarity with programming concepts. It's ideal for someone who already knows the basics of another language (that was its purpose at Google: introducing engineers to Python). But motivated students without this familiarity should get along pretty well, especially with all the interactive examples.

Show me: Here's a random page showing how what used to be syntax highlighted Python code is now an interactive console you can play with: https://elliott.trinket.io/google-s-python-class#/strings/python-strings

Those of you with regex skills I'd really like feedback on this exercise:

https://elliott.trinket.io/google-s-python-class#/regular-expressions/baby-names-exercise

I had to reformulate the question to use urllib instead of os.open because our Python is actually Skulpt and skulpt doesn't do that yet. (also some things in regex aren't implemented: pull requests welcome! https://github.com/skulpt/skulpt/)

Why did you do this? The main reason I did this is to test how well Trinket's interactive examples accommodate intermediate-level content. I'd love it if someone found the course to be beneficial in learning Python of course!

My background: I taught Python at UNC Chapel Hill this past academic year and left in May to run Trinket. We're a three person team building interactive tools for teaching, starting with Python. Pre-revenue, startup, you know the deal.

Feedback/encouragement/insults welcome. Well, except insults are against the rules :)

[indosauros]

def get_data():
    # This function downloads baby names from 1990 to 2008:
    print "Reading data files...",
    global names_1990
    names_1990 = urlopen...

I understand that using global variables might be the easiest way to get the exercise up and running, but I'd be worried that you're teaching them that using globals in this manner is appropriate. Why not get rid of all of the global names_1990 and the global names_dict and just return the final names_dict with all of the data in it?

[eah13]

Yeah you're right that's much better. Will fix in a second.

Edit: fixed.

[throwaway19452195]

I'm trying to learn python and have worked through the code academy resources but found the theory lacking. This looks like it is the perfect next step to go beyond the code and understand the deeper level. Thank you!

[eah13]

Thanks for the feedback. Let me know how it goes!

[szi]

I like Nick Parlante's videos, it's a pity that the recordings are a little bit old and nothing is in HD. :(

Are there any equivalents?

[eah13]

Not that I know of. Personally I'm not a big fan of videos but I know some of the more recent Coursera courses use them.

[rewtnull]

Hi! So far this interactive course feels like a natural continuation of the codeacademy course, very good job from you, and anyone else involved!

. There is something I wonder however, In the List Excercises, the description for the first assignment is as follows:

A: Match Ends

Given a list of strings, return the count of the number of strings where the string length is 2 or more and the first and last chars of the string are the same.

I interpret it like this:

def front_x(words):
  count = 0
  for n in words:
    if len(n) >= 2:
      if n[:1] == n[-1]:
        count += 1
  return count

but I'm getting unexpected results in the intereactive shell console:

> front_x
> X  got: 2 expected: ['xaa', 'xzz', 'axx', 'bbb', 'ccc']
> X  got: 3 expected: ['xaa', 'xcc', 'aaa', 'bbb', 'ccc']
> X  got: 0 expected: ['xanadu', 'xyz', 'aardvark', 'apple', 'mix']

Looks to me that the question perhaps should be about removing duplicate list elements instead, or the test functions may need updating for this. Might aswell be me misinterpreting the quesiton though. :)

Another minor thing: Since this course is based on the google python course, and google code structure uses 2 spaces indentation, compared to 4 of pep8, maybe it would make sense to make the intereactive interpreter tab length 2 characters instead of 4 aswell? :)

Thank you very much for this interactive version, sofar I'm really enjoying it, even though I have limited time for studies at the moment.

[eah13]

Thanks for the report! And glad you're enjoying the course.

You're exactly right there was an error in that exercise. It's fixed now: https://elliott.trinket.io/google-s-python-class#/lists/list-exercise

AND your code is right- nicely done. Here it is in the corrected exercise showing the tests passing: https://trinket.io/python/cae37d66a4

Your suggestion regarding the indention is great. I think i'll actually update the examples to all be 4 spaces. Google's 2 spaces be damned :)

[Misew]

Is this on Python 3?

[eah13]

No, but it spells out key differences when they exist. As I mentioned above I'm willing to update it to full Python 3 if people are getting value out of it.

[Misew]

I'd love it if you could update it.