Introduction to programming with Python
This workshop is an introduction to basic programming concepts and abstractions. It is laid out for hands-on workshops taking up roughly 4 hours. While we have tried to be compatible with Python 2 and 3 wherever possible, we'd strongly encourage you to use Python 3.
The initial version of this material was loosely based on the "Python für Kids" book by Gregor Lingl. It is conceptual-- rather than incidental --that it trades in idioms for learnability. We believe that beginners sometimes have to jump through one or another hoop to fully comprehend the scope and applicability of a concept. Every introduced abstraction solves another pain point in the life of a beginning programmer.
You can view this workshop being hosted here: http://opentechschool.github.io/python-beginners/
The following sections are for people who want to contribute.
This workshop is written in the reStructuredText_ format. The
.rst
files can be edited with a normal text editor.
It can be rendered to several output formats using Sphinx_. To do that, you need to have the following Python packages installed:
You can install these with pip using pip install -r requirements.txt
To push / pull translations from Transifex you will need the package
transifex-client
as well.
The fabric script fabfile.py
contains tasks making the
build process very easy.
If you just want to render the HTML version, it's sufficient to run::
$ fab build:en
Replace en
with the language you'd like to build.
This will create a directory _build
, containing the HTML version.
You can view this in a browser by running fab serve
and visiting the
web address listed.
Other builders <http://sphinx.pocoo.org/builders.html#builders>
_ can be
passed as an argument. For instance use singlehtml
to render the whole
tutorial into a single HTML file::
$ fab build:en,singlehtml
Translations should normally be done through Transifex.
You can see the project on Transifex
here <https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/python-for-beginners/>
_.
After editing the tutorial, it is desirable to update sources for it.
fab gen_pots
tx push -s
.tx pull -l de
, for de (german) or others.fab build:de
will compile po files, and build the docs for that
language.It is also possible to edit and update po files manually, you can check out
the other fab command (fab list
) for help with that.
.. note:: only .po files should be committed to version control. .pot and .mo files are built automatically.
The workshop is deployed as a GitHub Page
. A good way to do
that is described right here <https://gist.github.com/791759>
. To simplify
this process, you can use a nifty fabric target::
$ fab setup
This recreates the _build/html
folder, cloning the folder to the
gh-pages
branch of this repo. Then you should build updates for the
desired language. Then cd
into this folder, and git push the updates to
update the branch. Like so::
$ fab build:en
$ cd _build/html
$ git status
$ git commit --all
$ git push
The material presented here is a collaborative work. It has been created largely by OpenTechSchool_ Python coaches. Every bit, from exercises to translations, has been contributed by the community. After every workshop where this material is used we try to gather feedback on how to improve the material.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.
.. _OpenTechSchool: http://opentechschool.org .. _reStructuredText: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ .. _Sphinx: http://sphinx.pocoo.org/index.html .. _GitHub Page: https://help.github.com/categories/20/articles