Difference between revisions of "Python Office Hours"

Revision as of 21:07, 30 July 2015

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.

What to bring?

A computer: We have wifi at the space, but we don't have extra computers floating around. If you have trouble bringing a laptop, talk to us before the event and we could try to find one but we need to know beforehand (preferably a few days).

A kind attitude: Everyone is expected to Be excellent to each other at the space. On top of that, we'd like to follow The Recurse Center User's Manual on social rules. Their social rules "are designed to curtail specific behavior we've found to be destructive to a supportive, productive, and fun learning environment", and I think they also apply to events at hackerspaces.

An interest in learning python.

Learning resources

Tutorials

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."
official Python tutorial
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
- "The Community Data Science Workshops are a series of project-based workshops for anyone interested in learning how to use programming and data science tools to ask and answer questions about online communities like Wikipedia, Twitter, free and open source software, and civic media. The workshops are for people with no previous programming experience."
Software Carpentry: Lessons
- automating tasks using the Unix shell;
- structured programming in Python, R, or MATLAB
  - "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."
- version control using Git or Mercurial.
Data Carpentry: has lessons on python for ecologists
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.
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

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
Effective Computation in Physics
Python for Data Analysis: Data Wrangling with Pandas, NumPy, and IPython
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

Help find materials

Talk:Python_Office_Hours#help_find_new_and_better_guides

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

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 If you don't already have something to work on or study, look through the resources below.
+== What to bring? ==
+A computer: We have wifi at the space, but we don't have extra computers floating around. If you have trouble bringing a laptop, talk to us before the event and we could try to find one but we need to know beforehand (preferably a few days).
+A kind attitude: Everyone is expected to [[Be excellent to each other]] at the space. On top of that, we'd like to follow [https://www.recurse.com/manual#sec-environment The Recurse Center User's Manual] on social rules. Their social rules "are designed to curtail specific behavior we've found to be destructive to a supportive, productive, and fun learning environment", and I think they also apply to events at hackerspaces.
+An interest in learning python.
 == Learning resources ==
@@ Line 36: / Line 44: @@
 * [http://datacarpentry.org Data Carpentry]: has lessons on python for ecologists
 * [http://scipy-lectures.github.io/ 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."
-* [http://book.djangogirls.org/ Django Girls Tutorial]: tutorial that starts from python basics to django to deploying a django site. (all ages, despite name)
+* [http://tutorial.djangogirls.org/ Django Girls Tutorial]: tutorial that starts from python basics to django to deploying a django site.
 * [https://openhatch.org/wiki/Django_for_Designers Django for Designers] a Django tutorial that focuses on areas of Django that particularly affect designers, such as static files, template inheritance, and AJAX.
 * [https://developers.google.com/edu/python/ 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.