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[tommeagher]

Turns out @chrislkeller is teaching a similar, albeit shorter, intro class on Python. I asked him to chat with us so we can steal ideas from one another.

[chrislkeller]

It's true. Was just asked if I'd be willing to present the other day and was gonna reach out to you all. I'm told it's hands on, but with a title like Intro to Python Fundamentals it's overview lecture material with snippets.

And the scope is really basic, right? Two or three steps beneath what you all want to cover? Strings versus integers; lists, dicts and tuples; loops; conditionals and comparisons, etc?

Spitballing here, we could build up concepts that will serve as a foundation for what you plan to do? Here are foundational kinds of things that all add up to allowing you to build what you all want to build out of the gate?

Put another way, you told me about dir() couple months back. Had no idea about it or how useful it could be. Use it all the time now...

I'm really green when it comes to structuring things that can build off the presentations of others, but think this could be a fun collaboration for lack of a better word...

[tommeagher]

@chrislkeller, I'm thrilled to hear your'e teaching Python too. What day is it? How long of a session is it?

We're huddling up tonight to plan the boot camp, which is a full day on Thursday. Obviously, it'd be great to share resources and for ideas to be complementary. At the very least, it's good to not have to reinvent any wheels. So we'll definitely pick your brain for feedback on what we're thinking about. I think, depending on the schedule, there probably won't be much overlap between attendees, but we can always share ideas.

One other resource worth taking a look at it is @roncampbell's excellent session from last year: https://github.com/roncampbell/NICAR-2013 especially this overview of ideas about how to learn to program for newsroom denizens: https://github.com/roncampbell/NICAR-2013/blob/master/Programming%20for%20the%20Rest%20of%20Us

Chris, after our chat tonight, we'll put more into this repo (hopefully) and loop you in when it makes sense.

[esagara]

Interesting flow chart of what to do when your code is broken - http://i.imgur.com/WRuJV6r.png.

[chrislkeller]

@esagara: That's an awesome find.

@tommeagher: You guys teaching in an all-day session is going to be awesome.

This one is an hour session, but I'm not sure of the day yet. It's the intro course before Sedar and Jeremy tackle intermediate and advanced, the latter of which I'm hoping includes testing because I'd love to learn more.

Anyway, yeah I'm thinking with an hour to work with in an intro class, three or four concepts might be enough in addition to reference materials, links, code samples, etc.

[roncampbell]

One piece of advice: If at all possible, use IRE/NICAR machines. Chris Schnaars and I taught our sessions last year in a bring-your-own-laptop format. Much hilarity ensued. The differences between Windows and Mac were enough to ensure plenty of confusion.

See you all in Charm City.

Ron

On Jan 15, 2014, at 9:08 PM, Chris Keller wrote:

@esagara: That's an awesome find.

@tommeagher: You guys teaching in an all-day session is going to be awesome.

This one is an hour session, but I'm not sure of the day yet. It's the intro course before Sedar and Jeremy tackle intermediate and advanced, the latter of which I'm hoping includes testing because I'd love to learn more.

Anyway, yeah I'm thinking with an hour to work with in an intro class, three or four concepts might be enough in addition to reference materials, links, code samples, etc.

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