pydawans

welcome

This page is intented to give people a quick starting guide to the programming language Python. The content is directed to developers trying out Python for the first time, as well as people who are new to programming and try to get up to speed quickly with pratical examples. A quick word of advice especially for the newbies - do not get discouraged - I spend a lot of time on stackoverflow(great ressource to check if you are stuck), meaning: programming is like life-long learning; you will never have mastered everything. And always remember: Fear is the path to the Dark Side.

fast track

If you really do not have much time and just want to get a glimpse of python you can go to http://learnpython.org/. There you will learn the most basic python commands interactively without having to setup your own environment.
However, if you want to run the code locally and also get a deeper look into python and how to write programs you might want to read on.

setup

Without further ado lets get you started!

1. Install me:

Python was ported to many platforms and might in fact already be running on your system. But we still have to make sure that you are running a compatible version. Please do not download Python 3.x, as it is a newer version, which at this point does not provide the learning packages we use in this tutorial.

Mac, Linux

Here we just need to make sure that you have a relatively new python version. This will make your life a lot easier. Just open the terminal-app (e.g.: mac-os-x, linux ubuntu) and type the following:

python --version

You should get something like Python 2.7.6. Everything above Python 2.6.x and below Python 3.x should be more than enough for this tutorial. If you have a lower version number, please go to the official python website and download the newest version.

Windows

It is not very likely that you have Python installed without your knowledge, so you can just go to the official python website and download the newest Python 2.7.x for windows there.

2. Installing all the other stuff

The teaching tool I am using is called iPython notebook.

Mac, Linux

Open your terminal and type the following

easy_install ipython zmq mathlib numpy pandas tornado jinja2

You might receive a permission error message during your installation. Simply run the same command with a sudo in front of it. This will run the command in system administrator mode and install the packages properly.

You can test your setup by running:

ipython notebook --pylab inline

Windows

Install the setuptools, if needed. if needed in this case means that you have to check if the easy_install.exe is present in the folder C:\Python27\Scripts.

cd C:\Python27\Scripts
.\easy_install.exe ipython[zmp]
.\easy_install.exe math­lib
.\easy_install.exe numpy
.\easy_install.exe pandas
.\easy_install.exe tornado
.\easy_install.exe jinja2

You can test the server by running:

ipython notebook --pylab inline

3. Lets finally get started

Download the project as a zip(pydawans-master.zip) file and unpack it(or if you have experience with github you can also checkout this repository).

Mac, Linux, Windows

cd <PATH-TO-UNPACKED-FOLDER>
### e.g.: (Mac, Linux)
### cd /Users/marco/Downloads/pydawans-master/
### (Windows)
### cd C:\Downloads\pydawans-master\

ipython notebook --pylab inline

The following browser window should open(there might be more entries):

Just click on the exercises and play with them. FYI: Until I have had the time to write exercise 0 - how to work with ipython notebook you might want to familarize yourself with it yourself either here or here or simply by googling.