Learning Poetry, Learning Python, Avoiding Hurricanes

Currently, our school has decided to close tomorrow and Friday because of the incoming threat of Hurricane Florence. As such, our schedule will need to be adjusted slightly. This post is an explanation of that adjustment and some suggestions about how to spend your time as you wait out the storm, assuming you still have power and internet access.

We’re currently working on the “Remix Poetry” project, which requires learning a bit of Python. I’ll introduce some things in class, but to really learn well, you’re going to need to work independently. Some of you are using Nick Montfort’s Exploratory Programming book, and I know others are looking at web-based tools like learnpython.org or Codecademy.

Whatever works for you is fine, but to be able to work your way toward creating poetry, here are some concepts you should make sure you know by the time we return next week:

1. You should have a well-established workflow on your computer for writing and running Python. That could be with Jupyter Notebook, a hosted notebook in Azure, or even a good text editor and working knowledge of how to use your command line.

2. Make sure you know how to set a variable in Python, and that you know the differences between kinds of variables: strings, lists, and tuples.

3. You should know how to use a print statement to see the output of your program. And note, this syntax will be different between Python 2 and 3, so make sure you know which Python you have.

4. You should know how to use loops like for to iterate through a list.

With all those things in hand, you should be well-prepared to create some poetry!