Introduction to Programming
using Python
Susan Ibach | Technical Evangelist
Christopher Harrison | Content Developer
Meet Susan Ibach| @hockeygeekgirl
Technical Evangelist
Helping developers understand Visual Studio,
app building
Microsoft Certified Trainer
My first program was written in basic on a
computer with 64K of memory
Will not admit how many years coding
experience
Basic, Fortran, COBOL, VB, C#, HTML, Python
Frequent blogger and presenter
marathoner, wife, and mother of two awesome
Meet Christopher Harrison | @geektrainer
Content Developer
Focused on ASP.NET and Office 365 development
Microsoft Certified Trainer
Still misses his Commodore 64
Long time geek
Regular presenter at TechEd
Periodic blogger
Certification advocate
Marathoner, husband, father of one four legged child
Course Topics
Introduction to Programming using Python
- Day One
01 | Getting started
05 | Working with dates and times
02 | Displaying text
06 | Making decisions with code
03 | String variables
07 | Complex decisions with code
04 | Storing numbers
Course Topics
Introduction to Programming using Python
- Day Two
08 | Repeating events
12 | Reading from files
09 | Repeating events until done
13 | Functions
10 | Remembering lists
14 | Handling errors
11 | How to save information in files
Setting Expectations
Target Audience
People new to programming
Students
Career changers
IT Pros
Anyone with an interest in learning to code
If you want to follow along...
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Install the Python tools
Instructions coming soon...
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Getting started
Why and How
Susan Ibach | Technical Evangelist
Christopher Harrison | Content Developer
Click to edit
Master subtitle
style
Why learn to code?
Programming is a powerful tool you can use to solve
all kinds of problems
What do you want to do?
Build a phone app to help you find directions
Calculate how much money you need to buy a car
See what people are saying about your business on social
media
Program a wearable device so it tweets you when you
should re-apply sunscreen
Why Python?
There are a LOT of different programming languages
out there
Python is one of the easier ones to learn
There are lots of free tools out there you can use to
code or learn Python
There are a lot of different ways to use Python code
And as a bonus
Once you learn how to code in one programming
language it will be easier to learn another
programming language, and another, and another
JavaScript
C#
???
C++
Perl
Does anyone really use Python?
Industrial Light and Magic uses Python to help with
image processing and lighting special effects
ForecastWatch.com uses Python to help with weather
forecasts
DevNet uses Python to aggregate news feeds
A student in the England made a desktop
dinosaur roar every time it was mentioned on twitter
with Python and Raspberry Pi
But lets be clear about something
You wont learn enough in this course to start adding
special effects to the next big superhero movie
You WILL learn enough to start solving real world
problems with code
OR to just start having some fun
So how do I get started?
You need to install software on your
PC/laptop
There are a lot of
different tools out there
you can use to write
Python Code.
In this course we will
use Visual Studio +
Python Tools for Visual
Studio
The installation steps are explained at the Python
Tools for Visual Studio website
1. Install Visual Studio 2013 for desktop (free)
2. Install Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 so you have the
latest features
3. Install Python Tools for Visual Studio
4. Install the Python 3.4 interpreter
Geek Tip!
There are actually a lot of
different flavors of Python:
IronPython, IPython,
CPython, PyPy, Jython,
Canopy, Anaconda,
We will be using the CPython
interpreter with Python 3.4
So, if you copy code from a
website and it doesnt work
dont panic! It might just be
a slightly different version of
Python
How do I know I installed everything
correctly?
There is a tradition
among programmers
We always test our
installation by writing
the same program:
Hello World!
DEMO
Creating your Hello World program!
You have now created your first application
print('HelloWorld'
)
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Master subtitle
style
Best practices
Pick up good habits right away!
Comments in your code help you or someone else
understand
What your program does
What a particular line or section of code does
Why you chose to do something a particular way
Anything that might be helpful to know if I am looking at
the code later and trying to understand it!
In Python we use a # to indicate
comments
#MyfirstPythonApplication
#Createdbyme!
#Printcommanddisplaysamessageonthescreen
print('HelloWorld')
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o
n
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t
e
c
e
o
l
o
?
s
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Visual Studio uses color coding to make your code
easier to read
You can change the
colors if you want
Go to Quick Launch,
type Colors, select
Options |
Environment | Fonts
and Colors
Change it to whatever
you want
Congratulations you are now a coder
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trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of
Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a
commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT
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