Python For Everybody

A year or 2 ago I followed a course from the University of Michigan on Coursera called Python For Everybody to learn the basics of python. The course is not a traditional computer language programming course but more oriented to learning techniques to handle data sources like text files, database records, web pages and so on. In the course of handling these data you learn about the relevant python data types like strings, floats and lists and programming constructs like for loops and so on. In this respect it is a fast way to get programming in python as you learn a lot of useful things like parsing through text files, searching text using regular expressions and so on. As it is very hands on I thought it would even be nice for my children to follow. Of course it is all in English. This is not a problem for Hannelore but Merijn is a bit too young still to have to tackle English and programming together. As a result I now volunteered to start working on a Dutch translation of the course slides. I finally created a github account, learned the git basics and will start slowly to translate slides from English to Dutch. I’ll have Hannelore proof read and in that way turn a computer programming course which she isn’t very keen on into an English course which she is in to. Along the way she’ll learn python and a bit of git and github usage as well. I don’t expect her to become a programmer but hopefully she’ll start to realise that you can write and use your own apps as well as use other people’s apps. In a way the computer truly becomes the pinnacle of the multitools once you are able to write your own scripts and have it do your bidding. You can write a poem and make yourself and others happy. You can also write a program to help you automate tedious tasks or answer questions and feel equally happy.