10/05/2013

Wiki - Understanding basic Python using Pystep | An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python

Understanding basic Python using Pystep

One surprising fact about interactive programming in Python is that moderately sophisticated interactive programs can be constructed using only a very small subset of Python. Before tackling interactive programming, we will focus on learning a small, but useful, subset of Python 2. Our approach to learning Python will be to break this subset of Python into five levels with each level containing some new basic functionality of Python. To support this learning process, we have created a tutorial program called Pystep http://www.codeskulptor.org/#demos-pystep.py. Pystep supports the five language levels shown below that correspond to increasingly larger subsets of Python. For each language level, Pystep contains multiple examples that illustrate the structure and behavior of the particular language features associated with that level. You will continue to use CodeSkulptor for the development and testing of your Python code. We suggest that you start by reviewing this short summary of the basic features of Pystep and then experiment with the examples below. Each of these five levels of Python corresponds to a half-week of material. In particular, the first 2.5 weeks of An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python focuses on the following features of Python. Level 0 Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Expressions (Week 0a) Variables and assignments (Week 0b) Functions (Week 1a) Logic and conditionals (Week 1b) Local and global variables (Week 2a)

Created Wed 20 Mar 2013 11:31 AM PDT -0700 Last Modified Fri 29 Mar 2013 5:58 AM PDT -0700

https://class.coursera.org/interactivepython-002/wiki/view?page=pystepOverview

1/2

10/05/2013

Wiki - Understanding basic Python using Pystep | An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python

https://class.coursera.org/interactivepython-002/wiki/view?page=pystepOverview

2/2