Python Office Hours

Hi!

When and Where?

Every other Wednesday. It should appear on our handy-dandy calendar of events. We usually meet in the electronics area upstairs unless another group is meeting there.

3519 N. Elston Chicago, IL 60618

We talk on irc during at #pumpingstationone on freenode. It is handy for sharing links to information and pastebins. If you don't have an irc client, you can connect to the channel via this web client: #pumpingstationone

What is this?

This is a chance for people of all experiences levels to get together for programming, socializing, and moral support while working on things. This is a flipped "office hours" where you can learn from your peers. In flipped classrooms students watch lectures and read material outside the classroom then work on things in person. This isn't a formal class, but the idea is similar. Many people who attend are there to help.

If you prefer to work on things on your own, that is okay too! If someone asks for help, let them know that you are working on something and not available for help at the moment.

If you don't already have something to work on or study, look through the resources below.

Learning resources

Tutorials

• if you are new to programming, try out the Boston Python Workshop materials
• if you are new to python but know a little about programming, try out the Intermediate Boston Python Workshop projects.
• If you know some syntax already, try out NewCoder tutorials. NewCoder has tutorials on
  • Data Visualization
  • APIs
  • Web Scraping
  • Networks
• Community Data Science Workshop
• Learn Python The Hard Way: "instructs you in Python by slowly building and establishing skills through techniques like practice and memorization, then applying them to increasingly difficult problems."
• Programming with Python: "The best way to learn how to program is to do something useful, so this introduction to Python is built around a common scientific task: data analysis."
• Python Scientific Lecture Notes: "Tutorial material on the scientific Python ecosystem, a quick introduction to central tools and techniques. The different chapters each correspond to a 1 to 2 hours course with increasing level of expertise, from beginner to expert."
• Django Girls Tutorial: tutorial that starts from python basics to django to deploying a django site. (all ages, despite name)
• Django for Designers a Django tutorial that focuses on areas of Django that particularly affect designers, such as static files, template inheritance, and AJAX.
• Google's Python Class: This is a free class for people with a little bit of programming experience who want to learn Python. The class includes written materials, lecture videos, and lots of code exercises to practice Python coding.

Interactive Tutorials

• http://www.pythontutor.com/
• http://codingbat.com/python
• http://www.learnpython.org/
• http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/python
• How to Think Like a Computer Scientist
• Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures

Online python interpreters

If you want to try out python and scientific packages without installing everything, you can use these servers.

• https://colaboratory.jupyter.org/welcome/ a Google Drive app that provides an interactive ipython notebook (need to install google drive app)
• https://www.wakari.io/ ipython notebook (need account)
• https://www.pythonanywhere.com/ many different python shells. python, ipython, pypy (need account)

Books and Reading

• Two Scoops of Django: an excellent django book
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python: This is a guide for python developers that gives an overlay of the land of python development. In the guide's words: "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python exists to provide both novice and expert Python developers a best-practice handbook to the installation, configuration, and usage of Python on a daily basis."

Online courses providers

• edX
• Coursera
• Udacity
• Python Learn
• Software Carpentry

Help find materials

I'd like to get some curricula for these topics.

• web development
  • I found Getting Started with Django
• robots
• raspberry pi
• open data / civic hacking.
• games
• open science
• teaching
• young coders (see example from pycon Young Coders Tutorial)
• audio stuff. EarSketch curriculum. Introduction to programming with music. (has anyone tried this? The concept is neat so I've included it here)

random stuff

• graphite is an event monitoring platform written in python. here is a repo with a script that will set up an example graphite stack https://github.com/obfuscurity/synthesize

Python Office Hours/Organizing