Background

It's generally a good idea in life to tie your shoe laces before going to run. Let's have a look at exactly what we're doing and using in this course.

What is Programming?

When we program, we are providing instructions to the computer to complete a task. Computers aren't too good at guessing what we do, and if they are good then we probably told it how to guess. Programming is how we tell the computer exactly what we need it to do.

Humans speak in various languages like English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch etc. These are called natural languages. Computers can't naturally understand our languages, so we use programming languages to communicate what we want.

Python

Python is a straightforward, near English like programming language that's used by tons of organisations and newcomers alike. There's a lot of features about Python which you're encouraged to read about here. One key thing to note is that Python is generally regarded as an interpreted languauge. This means that code can be run line by line - for you that means Python can give you quick feedback on whether your programs work or not.

Version 3

It's rare that you'll create software in this world and not work on it afterwards. Python was first released in 1991, there's a chance that it's older than you! Throughout the years the language has seen many changes to keep it up to date with current technology and to push new boundaries of programming. The last major change is backwards incompatible i.e. code written in Python 3 isn't expected to work or behave as expected if run as a Python 2 program.

Python 3 was released in 2008... the reasons for not using it in this day and age are completely moot with the exception of maintaining legacy code. If a stranger asks you to code a new program in Python 2 say "No, go away, you're a creep, and use Python 3 already". We'll be using version 3 in this course.