1. Introducation and Installation¶
Why am I doing this course?
I’ve never formally learned programming. I mostly learned programming by looking at pieces of code. I vaguely understand the differences between copying a reference and copying a value, but I still encounter situations where something unintentional happens. I vaguely know the difference between a class and an object, but I wouldn’t be able to explain it. My best practices for identing and commenting change every month. It’s time to learn things formally.
Creator: Guido van Rossum in 1989. Name inspired by Monty Python
BDFL: Benevolent dictator for life
Python Philosophy:
Beautiful is better than ugly
Explicit is better than implicit
Simply is better than complex
Complex is better than complicated
Readability counts
For the complete list,
import this
Python 3: close to Guido’s ideal vision.
not backward compatible, python2 code must be ported.
everything is an object
print is a function (keyword in python2)
one integer type (python2 had separate types for long and short)
all text is now unicode
Python 3 has already been around for 10 years.