Python for Beginners Information Session

Key Takeaways

Hello. Good, good day, good morning, afternoon, evening, whatever it might be. Um, session is starting soon. My session is starting. Let's get rid of the timer there. Um, there we go. Good. Welcome everyone. I'll start in about 20 seconds. This is the time where you if this was a real life auditorium and people are finding their seats and sort of just getting their coffee ready or their popcorn or whatever it might be. But um let us make a start because I want to get us going. Welcome everyone. Um just to make sure you're in the right place. Today I'll be talking about I'll be giving you some information about a new course we are offering here at Real Python. Python for beginners. So, if you're a beginner, you've never done programming before, or maybe you've done a bit of programming, you've you've done the basics, but you still consider yourself a beginner, then this is the right place for you. Um, if you're a very proficient Python programmer, you're more than welcome to stay. But I'll be talking about a course aimed for those earlier in their learning journey, as it were. Good. Okay. Um, let's make a start. Hopefully, you've all found your seats. There are two different audiences here. There are some of you who are on Zoom and uh you know how Zoom works. This is an information session but it's also a Q&A session. So please do ask questions. Um if you're on Zoom you have two options of asking questions. There's a chat. Um or if you want you can raise your hand and uh come on stage if you like and ask the question directly whatever you prefer. Then we also have uh many of you watching the streaming. We're also streaming this on several social media platforms and um um on most platforms you should be able to um ask the question on the platform you're at and they'll be able to see it. So if you see me glance to my left, it's because I have the chats there with uh the chat from Zoom and the chat from social media. So I'm keeping an eye on any questions that come in. Um brilliant. As always, we have some spammers on YouTube maybe. Um never mind. We'll ignore them. Good. Good, good, good. Okay, let's um make a start. So, you're beginners hopefully or or nearly beginners. I've told you to ask questions whenever you want. Let me briefly tell you a bit who I am. Not because you didn't come here to find out about me, of course, but this is a live course. I'll be teaching this course. So, it's useful for you to know a bit. So, I'm Steven, first of all, if you can't see my name underneath me, Steven Graeta. Uh I'm a scientist by training. I've spent many years um I've spent many years working as a physicist before shifting from physics to Python and for the last 10 years or so I've been focusing on Python education in fact this is not starting soon right there you go we've started now u this is the link by the way I'll refer to it often all of the information I'll be talking about today um you'll also find um a summary of it there at realpython.com/live And I'll show you this page later on as we go through the syllabus of the course. So I've moved from physics to Python. I've been working um with teaching Python for for a while. Um about a year ago I joined Real Python as part of the core team. I had worked with Real Python before but now I'm part of the core team and I came in to set up the live content for Real Python. So, the course I'm going to talk to you about today, um, I designed the course so I can answer questions on what's in it and why it's designed the way it is. I'll also be teaching it so I can answer questions on how it will actually run. And, uh, and anyway, you know who I am. You know who's going to be teaching this course. Um, if you're familiar with Real Python, some of you may may be new to Real Python, in which case, welcome to Real Python. But if you're familiar with Real Python, you probably know the tutorials that you may have used um or if you're a beginner, you're starting to get to to get to know and maybe you know the video courses um which have been around for at real Python for a while. What we're doing here and this is something we've introduced this year is to add yet another way of learning and this is the live cohort courses which are new for real Python. We've already run quite a few earlier this year, but they were courses for intermediate learners. So, the format of the course, the type of course that I'm going to talk to you about, we've actually run it. It's tried and tested. We've we've also made some improvements based on the feedback that students gave us. But those weren't courses for beginners. Whereas now, um, starting soon, we have our course for beginners. And these courses are great because well depending on how you like to learn of course different people have different formats of learning, different ways of learning. But if you like to have something to keep you accountable, something that is thorough, you have work to do every day, but that you can fit around your daily lives. um you've got busy lives, I'm sure, with work, studies, um um taking the dog for a walk, whatever it might be. What we've done is we've designed a designed a course that is um covers a lot of the fundamentals, covers them in detail, but that you can fit within your existing commitment. So, you don't have to give up weeks of your life and focus exclusively on learning Python, you can fit it with everything else. That's the course we designed and I'll be telling you more about the format of the course, what's going to happen on every day. So then you can get a sense of whether this works for you or not. Previous students in in earlier courses we've run um also find that the accountability helps the fact that you have material every day. You have an instructor who is I mean I'm not forcing you to do the work of course um but that puts a bit of accountability and you feel like you want to keep up with the cohort because you won't be studying alone. you'll be studying in a cohort, a small cohort, but still it's a group of students learning together. Um, so so that's great for keeping the motivation as well. Okay. So there are two parts of today's session. I want to talk about the format of the course. That's important because you want to make sure it's what works for you. It's what you can fit within your um your day. And then we'll talk about the content of the course. Now, I've already told you it's a beginner's course. So, in some ways, um the content is easy, right? We're going to start from the basics. But I'll still take you through some of the key topics and I'll show you where you can read the curriculum in more detail. Good. Uh I have a question that's come in. Um do we have a Spanish translation? No, unfortunately, at the moment, um um I do speak a bit of Spanish, but not enough to run the session and certainly not enough to um run the course. So I'll um I'll have to stick with English unfortunately. Um please do keep questions coming. Um Drago, that's one of the first questions I'll be asking. So I'll be answering. So I'm not ignoring your question. The question is how what is the time commitment per week? I'll be talking about that uh very shortly. In fact, let me do that now. Let me start with the format. Let me shift the page. And I do not like PowerPoint slides. So in the course you will not ever see a PowerPoint slide. So so I don't have one either here. What I'm going to do is I'm going to write a few notes as I go along. Um so it's it's a bit like a running commentary. Let me give you um the highlights if you like of of of the format and then I'll go through each one of them and extend a bit. So first of all importantly this is 8week course. How long is the course? Well it's 8 weeks. Um I'll tell you in a bit why 8 weeks why not shorter why longer. there there's a reason behind um there's a reason behind everything we've done here. Um now to answer Draco's question roughly it's one to two hours commitment per day per week day and I spelled commitment wrongly there. Thank you for telling me there. Um there we go maybe. Anyway, never mind. No, still doesn't like it. Commitment is there. There you go. Per weekday. So Monday to Friday um I'll tell you the weekend is is calmer but later I'll talk about a forum which is 24/7 pretty much but the daily content is Monday to Friday for 8 weeks roughly it's going to be about one or two hours commitment per weekly day. I'll say a bit more about this and sort of I'll I'll add a bit more detail on what is included in those one or two hours. Um now a lot of the content a lot of the daily content is going to be designed in a way that you can fit it within your day. However, this is also a live course and we have three weekly live sessions. So we will meet live. The whole the content is not delivered entirely live. Why? Because we want to make it flexible. We want it so that a lot of the content you can actually fit early in the morning before you go for your morning run or in your lunchtime or maybe when you come home from work and whenever fits you but there are going to be three fixed points every week where we're going to meet live and this is I think a really important aspect of this course. So I'll tell you more about this. So three three times per week we will meet like this on Zoom. I say like this, it's not actually like this, right? Because here I am talking to a large number of people. In this course, it's going to be a smaller group and we will be all talking to each other. Um, I'll tell you more about time zones. I have a question coming in on Zoom. Um, we have two sessions per uh we have two different sessions. Hopefully, they'll meet your time zones. I'll I'll show you where they are and I'll show you the times um in a bit. So, keep your questions coming in. Um, if I know I'm going to answer it later, it's okay. I'll I'll keep it in the flow. Um, good, good, good. Uh, three sessions a week. There's going to be 10 students per cohort. So, these are small groups. I think it's important because we want to have in these live sessions, it's about discussing. It's about getting to know each other. It's about you being able to be be comfortable asking questions and sharing your views. The moment it becomes large sessions, you cannot do that. So um 10 students and um doesn't seem like much but I think this is one of the most important aspects of the course the forum. Okay so that's an overview. Let me go through each one of these now and I'll add a bit more. Um I'll keep looking at questions there. Um I've got a question about recordings. So I'll answer that now. Yes, the live lesson I'm assuming. Okay. This this question could be a recording of this information session. Um this is being recorded. So um those of you on Zoom will receive an email. Those of you on social media, if you can't find it on social media platform you're on, send us an email and we'll send you a link. You'll find this session on the real Python YouTube page at the end. However, uh if the question was about the live sessions in the course, ideally they're live. It's about having a discussion. Ideally, you should commit to this course if you think you can come to these sessions live, but they are recorded. So, if someone has to drop out in one of these live sessions or on one particular Wednesday you have a busy day at work, then the sessions are recorded and the students in the course will have access to the recordings. Um, incidentally, uh, I'll also post here, let me post it now in the two chats. Um I had this earlier on the slide. All the information I'm giving you is um on the page I've just given you. So all the details someone asked me about the time zones. I'll talk about it later on. It's also there. Dates, times, cost, everything is on realpython.com/live. Okay. So eight weeks. We wanted this course to be not a course that just scratches the surface a bit. You learn a few things but you really can't do much about it. You know that's what a oneweek course does, right? Or a two week course unless it's very intensive and we don't want it to be very intensive either because this is a course designed for people who want to fit this with their existing commitments. So 8 weeks is is a good period of time where we can cover quite a bit. We don't have to rush through topics. We can go a bit deeper in some of the topics. Work on projects as I'll show you later on. um we'll be not just learning the theory, we'll be applying it right from week one in lots of mini projects and then a project at the end. Um so eight weeks um as I've mentioned the content will be a Monday to Friday but it's it's an 8week course. Um nothing much more I can say about the eight weeks you know how long 8 weeks are. Now I mentioned earlier it's roughly one to two hours commitment per day per weekday. This will vary, right? There might be some days where it might, you know, you might feel like, oh, it's taking me a bit longer than two hours to cover this material, but that will always be balanced by some days where, you know, it might be like, oh, it I've got all all of today's stuff in one hour. So, it will vary slightly depending on the day. But roughly, if you're thinking, can I possibly fit this course in with my daily commitment? If you do not have one or two hours per day, this is not the right course for you because um you will need to put in as you would expect um the time to go to the learning and then um the time in sort of meeting live having discussions working on exercises working on the projects etc. So roughly one or two hours commitment per week day plus or minus um what will a typical day look like? Now there is no such thing as a typical day but roughly um each day you'll have content on the course platform and this will include um a video from me introducing the day just to link everything in and then I've cured material from the real Python resources. Some of it will be um tutorials segments of tutorials to read through. Some of them will be video lessons. These are the recorded ones. And this is the content that you can fit in whatever time of the day. It's there on the platform. Um you can fit it in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, whenever you want. If you've had a busy day and you haven't been able to um finish everything from that day, you can catch up the following day as well. Likewise, if you feel like you know you're going to have a busy day tomorrow, you can go a bit ahead and start doing tomorrow's material. So that's the daily um the daily material that's on the platform. um there'll be exercises um to work through etc etc. Now that's not just it right um and this is where we come for our live weekly sessions and um let me write here so there are two types of sessions a week there are well there's one 90inut um let's call it a structured lesson so this is this would be on a Wednesday I'll show you the times in a bit and you'll find the times in your time zone at realpython.com/live and so the Wednesday session is a 90-minute session and this is where we're covering material. So some of the material won't be covered in the recordings and the videos you have. We'll cover it live. This is normally the type of material that I find it's better to discuss face to face and to to have a live discussion. But that's one session. Then we have two Q&A sessions per week. Per week. So that's where the three live sessions come. Um these would be Monday and Friday for these beginner's courses. So Monday, Wednesday and Friday we'll be meeting live. The Monday and the Friday are well Q&As's as it says on the tin. Um there there's I don't come in with a plan of what I want to cover. This is where you can bring questions. Um I will answer them. But I often like to call this not a Q&A but a Q&A and D. The D is for discussion because and this is true for the for the structured lesson as well. I think a lot of benefit comes out from these live sessions from the discussions we have. Um so yes you will ask questions but my answers will often be in the form of a discussion you will give me your views and um those discussions are usually very meaningful because it's where we we can explore and meander a bit around Python and that's what really gives us the the the deep learning. So I find these live lessons really useful from an instructor's point of view and I know that um many learners we've run these courses for intermediates as I've mentioned earlier um found this live aspect really important because you'll be going through material um every day you will have questions there's no doubt no matter how great our tutorials are and our video courses are and I'm sure they are you still have questions because that's how learning works right you're thinking have I understood this correctly. And there are two ways you can deal with that. Um, one of them is to say, "Ah, I've got a Q&A later today. I'm going to ask Stephen this question. Let me write it down." Um, I'll tell you the second way in a bit. But that's what these Q&As are. You'll have lots of questions. You have a way of um, ironing them out in a live um, session with other students and with myself, of course. Now to make these live sessions work and effective um we can't have 50 60 70 students in a course. So each cohort each group is limited to 10 students. Now we are running two simultaneous cohorts, two cohorts at the same time. The live lessons will be at different parts of the day. So depending on what which one suits you um you'll either be in my morning one or my afternoon one. Yours would be different times. Um and this is important because in the live sessions I think we want to be smaller groups. Um but overall there'll be 20 students learning together, 10 in one cohort and 10 in the other. Um oh by the way someone asked me how long will the Q&A and D sessions be? Um in fact thank you. I I'll put the D there as well. Q&A and D question and answer and discussion. They're scheduled for 60 minutes. Sometimes we go longer because if there are questions we'll just keep answering them. Right. So, um, uh, often if there are still questions, they go a tiny bit longer. It depends how many questions you have. But these were these are six they're scheduled for 60 minutes and, uh, the Wednesday session is a 90-minute session. Um, good. I'll have a quick look there. I'll come back to some questions, right? I can see a few questions there. Um, brilliant. I think I've answered many of them, but I'll I I'll keep an eye on the questions. Last but not least, as they say, um it's usually a cliche, right? But it is true because I think the forum is one of the most important aspects of this course. Of course, everything else is important, but the forum is there just for this course. So 20 students, 10 per cohort. In the forum, we can all communicate together because in the forum, it's actually better to have slightly more people, more discussions. So in the live lessons, it's going to be 10 and 10. In the forum, it's going to be everyone together. you're all learning the same thing. And the forum is there just for the course. So 21 of us plus some of my colleagues maybe who will be there. And the idea is I did mention when you're going to the material you're going to have questions. One way one option is to write it down and then come and ask it in the Q&A session or or and or you can simply go straight away on the forum and post it there. The forum is a 247 platform. Now, I should put a little star there next to it, right? I do have to sleep from time to time. I am human. I promise I'm not an AI. So, I do have to sleep. Um, in weekends, I might have, you know, the kids to take somewhere. So, when I say 24/7, you can ask the questions 24/7. There's probably going to be someone from the cohort there 24/7. I'll be there a lot of the time, not quite 24/7 because sleep is important. Um, but you can ask the question at any point and you'll get a response fairly quickly, especially if it's my working day. And the idea of the forum is very similar to the Q&As's. It's yet another place to keep the conversation going. You'll have questions. I'll post answers, but often in a discussion form. Um, I'll share more of my thoughts on the forum. Sort of it's a very informal way of sharing my perspectives. Um, exercises. You'll be working on exercises. You finished it. let me post it on the forum and see what Stephen or anyone else thinks. So the forum is a lively place where we can keep the discussions going for the whole eight weeks of the course. Um good uh I've got a another question there. Is the live session included in one to two hours per day? Great question. Uh yes. So when I say one to two hours per day, this 90 minutes is normally included in the day. the Q&A isn't fully included. So with on Q&A days, the Q&A is sort of we're stretching the two hours if you like. Um but this 90 minutes as you'll see later on on most Wednesdays when we have a 90-minut session on most not all Wednesdays you won't have any material to go through um in your own time. So the 90-minute session will be either the only sort of learning or there will be a tiny bit more. Um however the Q&As are usually sort of they stretch a bit over the two hours. Um we're trying to find a compromise here to fit in a lot of material, a lot of live content, a lot of live interaction between me and you as students but also to keep it um fairly manageable. Um let me have a look at few more questions. So this is more or less the format. I think I've covered everything in the format. Um let me have a look whether I've missed anything. Um I'll come to the content in a bit. Let me have a look at a few more questions. Um someone mentioned project there. I I I do have something to say about projects. So um hello to everyone by the Sorry, I'm not responding to everyone saying hello. Um, hello to all of you. Um, um, someone asked me here, by the way, if I've missed your question at some point, um, do ask it again. Um, someone asked me here, I have been reading much theoretical literature and now I focus on the practical and would like to know how to remember how to use elements like functions. This Okay, this is a common question, theory and practice. um you need to learn the theory like with every technical subject you can't ignore the theory some people try to do that some people say I'm just going to go and work straight away on projects and that's great but you need to learn the theory as you go along so the theory is important but another mistake is the other way around is the other extreme to learn lots of theory and then learn more theory and then more theory and that that is great but the theory by itself doesn't give you a project So what we're going to try to do in this what we will do in this course is to merge the two. A lot of the material you'll be doing in sort of the the on your own learning. Um this is this is material I've cured for you for every single day of the course. A lot of it will be obviously covering the theory but we will have lots of projects going throughout. And that's where we're going to be as soon as you've learned the theory. Let's apply it to the project we're working on this week. And that's where we're trying to get you to take that theory and translate it into practice. This is a bit tricky sometimes. Um I often compare learning to program with learning a foreign language. Some of you may have experience with learning foreign language. And sometimes you get to a point may maybe some of you will uh will say yeah that's me when I was learning whatever language it might be. You get to a point where you've learned the language enough to be able to read it and more or less understand when you read it, maybe even when you listen someone speaking. But if it's you who needs to write from scratch or if it's you who needs to speak, you find it really hard. Programming is the same. If you learn a lot of theory, that's great. You may be able to look at code and then, oh yeah, I understand what this code does. But if you have a blank screen and you want to try to write code, that's where you need to learn how to apply the theory to practice. And that's where the projects come in. Um, who was asking that question? Um Emnon, I'm not sure whether that was your question. Hopefully I've answered that question for you. Um do we have any exercises after a 90-minute session on Wednesday? Um so you'll have exercises are there throughout the whole course. So there will be some standalone exercises and and then we have projects. I'll show you the curriculum of the course and you'll see lots of mini projects as well as um I'll tell you about the main project at the end. And the way I the way the projects work is as follows. Um I will not be telling you here's how to do this project. Copy the code I'm I'm doing. What we'll do is we'll do it the other way around. We'll discuss what the project is. I'll tell you okay today why not try to work on this aspect of the project. You work on it and then we'll discuss it on the forum and the Q&As. Yes. I will also have my own videos showing you. Okay, now that you've tried working on projects, here's how I would do it. But the idea is you try it first and that's where you're so to answer the question about exercises. The projects and exercises are spread throughout and on the forum um I often post extra exercises um depending on the day's topic. I'm like, "Oh, here's a good exercise to try out." And the idea here is that if you have time to try out the exercises, that's great. Um, I tend to provide slightly more exercises than you might need, right? So, so depending on how much time you have. Um, let me go through a few more questions before I move to the content side of things. Um, let's have a look. Do you have a recommended study or learning method to fix what the daily or week I mean everyone has their own way of studying and learning right so the way the content is is it's structured right so I'm I'm I'm giving you what's first second third fourth so the best way is to go through the material some of it will be reading through it some of it will be video lessons and my I'll tell you my way of learning my learning is to go through it. Um, write some notes as I go along. Write questions. It's like, oh, I didn't quite understand this. Write those questions. And then this is where asking those questions is possible in this course because you can ask them on the forum or you can bring them along in the Q&A sessions. Um, again, I'm I'm happy to discuss individual study styles if people learn differently. I think um my advice would be to keep up with the material every day. Uh to attend the live sessions, they're they're an essential part I think of making everything bind together and to participate in the forum. Um this is very much a multimodal course. You have some stuff you will read, some stuff you'll watch video courses, some stuff we'll be doing live, some stuff is exercises and projects you're working on. And then there's the forum, the continuous conversation. So there are different styles of learning all coming together into this 8week course. Um, good, good, good. Uh, I'll come back to Okay, I'll come to some other questions in a bit. Let me jump on my screen to this page. Um, so I've talked about the format of the course. Let me now talk about the content of the course. I mentioned earlier, by the way, this link, I'm not going to read through it, right? In fact, I'm going to start straight away there. Um, it's the link I've sent you earlier. I'll post it again. realpython.com/live. You'll find all of this information there. Um, incidentally, you'll also find the times in your own time zone. I'm based in the UK, so you can see that the the two different times are shown in my time zone, but when you go to the site, you'll see the times in your own time zone. So, then you know it's either one or the other, right? So, um, you will join one of these groups depending on which one suits you. As you can see, they're split 10 hours apart, which is not great for me, but that's okay. I'll deal with it. Hopefully, it's good for you because you can pick the one that fits um your time best. Um, they're not 10 hours apart. I can't even adapt now. Anyway, there they're there are different parts of the day. Right. There you go. I need more coffee. Um, so this is a beginner's course. As I've mentioned before, no prior knowledge is needed. So if you've never done any programming before, if you've never touched Python before, this is the right course for you. But also, and this is quite common, right? There are many people who've started learning the basics, maybe from a textbook, maybe from tutorials. So you may you may not be an absolute beginner who's who've never done anything, but you feel like you just know bits and bobs and and now you want to bring it all together, learn the fundamentals properly and and and then use it as a springboard for what's next. So this is also the right course for you. If you've done some of the basics, of course, some things you will have seen before. But one thing I really believe in when teaching is to try to understand topics at a slightly deeper level. Um, so not just how do I write an if statement? Um, how do I write a while loop, but why do we do it this way? How how how is how is Python why does Python require us to do these things this way? Understanding the why we do things helps us with the applying the theory. Learning the theory is great, but if we want to apply it, knowing why things are the way they are. So digging a bit more underneath the surface I find is really important. So even if you think oh yeah I've covered if statements I've covered while loops you might find that as we're discussing it you'll understand them at a deeper level. Okay so it's a course for beginners. So of course we're going to starting with the basics. If you're a beginner and you've never done any programming before none of these terms will make sense to you. So don't worry. Um these are some of the basic building blocks that whatever you want to do with programming it doesn't matter what it is you may want to go on to do game development data science you may want to work in science web de um whatever it is anything you want to do with programming you will need these fundamentals you can't escape it so um you'll also see that there are many projects I've mentioned these so we won't wait till the very end for a project. We will have a main project as I'll show you later on, but we'll have these mini projects. So, here, as you can expect, this week's mini project will be using the material we've been covering that week, and we'll be building it throughout the week, sort of not just in one go. Um, and there you go. You can see every week has the three sessions. Um, they're always Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The times will change depending on your time zone. We then move on. I'm not going to go through all of this, right? I'll you can go through it. I'll give you an overview, you know, I'll go a bit quicker. Um, next is iteration. Iteration is where we want to repeat. Um, we have lots of items. We want to do something with each and every one of those items. Um, a common tool is the for loops, which some of you may have heard of. And lists is a really important structure in Python where we store information because programming is about storing information, storing data and then doing stuff with those data. So we need to have we have different ways in Python of how we store information and lists is one of them. There's another one there a funny named one called tpples or tupas another mini project there as you can see and then the three sessions for week the Q&A Q&A and the live class on Wednesday. Now week three this is one of the superpowers of programming defining functions. Uh let me translate this. This is where you are creating your own words. Um, if Python is a language, you can actually invent your own words and give them a meaning. And this is really, really useful in programming because you can create many programs that do one thing specifically, package them in what's called a function, and that makes programming so powerful and so flexible. So, in week three, we'll be talking about how you can create your own Python words, create define functions. Um, we talked about data structures, we talked about lists, right? Week two, this is where you store data. Um there are many other places in Python where you can store data depending on what type of information you have and how you want to use it. So in week four we're going to focus on these data structures. Um talk about things like dictionaries which are different from lists. So these are different containers if you like um suitable for different types of data. We then move on in week five to a topic which is often considered upper beginners, lower intermediate, whichever way you want to look at it. And this is a subject called object-oriented programming. Now the reason I've introduced object-oriented programming in a beginner's course is for two reasons. So the reasons are first of all it's a really important it's called a paradigm, right? A style of coding. It's a really important style of coding in modern programming. You'll see it a lot and depending on what you want to do later on with Python, it may very well be a type of programming you'll need to really master well eventually. So, it's important to introduce it early on. That's one reason. It's an important standalone topic in itself. Second reason, Python as a language is built on top of object-oriented programming principles. So in order to understand Python at a deeper level, we need to understand the basics of this type of programming. So that's the second reason. Understanding the basics of what we call OOP for short helps us understand how things are connected. I mentioned digging underneath the surface of Python. Once you do the the plumbing underneath the surface, if you like, is all object-oriented programming. So understanding it even not in in all the detail you this is this is a topic you might learn more about in a future course but understanding the basics helps us understand Python better and that's what we're here for right to understand the basics of Python really well. Um week six we'll talk more about objective Python and how it links with everything we've done in weeks one to five. Um and then um however, no matter how much experience you get in programming, you will always have bugs in your code. A bug is when you've written code and it doesn't do what you expected to do. Either it gives you an error or it gives you an answer which is wrong. And it's so common in programming that the skill to find the bugs and fix them um has a name and it's a part of programming itself and that's debugging. So, uh, debugging is a bit art, a bit science. We'll start looking at some of the debugging techniques here. Um, to so that so that we know how to find problems with our code. They're not always obvious to find and how to fix them once we find them. Um, that's weeks one to six. That's where all the content, the theory is. The final two weeks, week seven and week eight, week eight, um, we're going to be working on. So, we've had lots of mini projects in weeks one to six. Weeks seven and eight are one larger project and we're going to be focusing just on this project in the last two weeks. As you can expect, this project uses pretty much all the topics we've been um working on in the previous weeks. So, this is where we're going to bring everything together in in a project. As I've mentioned before, the way the project works is not me coding and you copying, but we discuss what needs to be done today on on you know the first day of the project. You try it out. You see how it goes. You share your code in the forum. We discuss it and then yes, I'll have my version eventually at the end of the day or the following day so that you can sort of see my input from it. But after you've done your work, good. I've been talking a lot there. Um in the live sessions I'll be talking I still be talking of course but I've mentioned this earlier but I mentioned again because it's important. The live sessions in the course are not like this session. In this session I'm talking to uh lots of you. Um it's a one-way communication. Although you're asking me questions and I'm answering them. But in the live sessions is going to be a smaller group. We can all see each other. You see me, I see you. It's I always like to think of the live sessions as if we're sitting in a comfortable coffee shop um quiet one because we need to chat um sitting around the same table chatting and discussing. So the sessions will be very different to this one. Um let me have a look at a few more questions now and if there's anything so that that's the end of what I wanted to talk about right so now I have a look at questions I'll summarize what we've done and I'll keep going as long as there are questions to answer. So if there's anything you want me to go through again, let me know. Um let me have a look at there's uh a YouTube question. Um do we have a course completion certificate? Yes. Those of you who are familiar with the video courses on real Python. If you're absolute beginners, maybe you haven't seen them before. Um there is a completion uh certificate at the end. Same with this course. When you complete this course, you have a real Python. It's it's an internal one, right? So it's a um it's a real Python certification showing you've completed this 8week course. Um week one of the course we learn variables. I'm reading a question there, right? I'm reading it out because not all of you can see all of the questions. In week one of the course we learn variables, y loops, etc. And other weeks we don't go back to it. Um do we keep revisiting these items throughout the course? So that's a great question. So you are right. um the main topics. Let me go back to week one for example. Okay. If we're learning these topics in week one, will we never come across them again in weeks two, three, four, five? No. Because what we're doing is we're building on top of these. So the mini project in week one is a bit limited because we can only use these topics. So there's so much you can do, right? But when we get to the mini project in week two, this project will not only use these topics, it will use these topics plus whatever we've learned in week one. You get the idea as we move on to week three. Now, now I'm not saying the mini project in week three will use every single topic we've done so far. But mini project in week three is not limited to using these topics. Um, it's going to also be using the while loops and the for loops, etc., etc. And as we keep building more and more, every minute project is going to then review and come back to things. Um, and then of course, of course, of course, of course. And I know you've asked this question before I talked about the project, the final twoe project, we're going to pretty much cover within this project almost everything we've covered. Um, so in these final two weeks, then everything will come back. And you might think, oh yes, the if statements were in week one. Let me go back and review what we've done in week one if you need to. So that's what this project is at the end. So we will we will keep coming back to the topics we've covered because our projects will get more complete. And this is what real programming is, right? When you're programming, you're not thinking I'm going to use for loops and functions. You're going to use whatever tools you need and bring them all together. That's why we have lots of projects. Um Drago, hopefully that's answered your question. Um, okay. Sorry. Someone said you had a worry which I've articulated well and made it clear. I don't know which one it is, but good. I'm glad I've helped you if that's the case. Um, uh, someone asked me, do we have activities on the weekends, too? So, no. But sometimes u I might have some um exercises or some some some additional exercises where be like look if you want to spend a bit of time in the weekend working on this why not try this exercise sort of something on the side but really you know you you need some time this is a this is a it's only it's only with an inverted commas about one or two hours of commitment a day but it's an intensive course there's a lot of material there's a lot of learning happening so It's not a bad idea to leave the weekend out, go and do other things, you know, run in the park, whatever you do on the weekends, and have a break from your learning as well. On the other hand, if you've maybe fallen a bit behind because you were busy, then you can also use the weekend to catch up as well. So, so the weekend is off. Um, um, Andre says, "OP is where Python shines." I agree. OP is a great aspect of Python which is why we're we're introducing it in a beginner's course even though normally it's more of an intermediate topic. Um now I have a question and um I thought someone asked this and u um I I'll read it. Would you say that it's still relevant to learn coding today with the rise of AI chatbots that can write code for you? Now, this is a topic that's been debated a lot recently. If you follow the Real Python podcast, by the way, we've just recorded an episode that talks a lot about this. I think it's coming out um not today, next Friday, because the Real Python podcast comes out every Friday. Uh it's it's always nice listen, but I think next Friday we're going to talk about this. But let me give you my um a piece of my mind about AI. I use AI daily and my view is very similar to other programmers who use AI daily. The more programming you know, the more efficient AI makes you. The less programming you know, the more risky using AI is. Now, I have seen and I'm sure you have seen some people on social media saying, "Oh, look what I've built with no knowledge of coding. I got AI to do it for me." Almost always there are some fun projects. Um very few of them are projects that are used in in real world scenarios and there's a reason why because when you write code an important part of it is can I trust this code to reliably give me the output I need and so far no one has wanted to rely too much on AI generated code unless there's a human programmer who's been looking at it and making sure it's right. But um I've been teaching Python for about 10 years. So of course most of it was pre-generative AI. And before AI, I would always say look, you need to learn the basics and the fundamentals of programming. You have to start there. But then you need to keep learning and and it will take a bit for you to be able to write a complete project that is useful in your work life. It you might be able to write projects. We have lots of projects here, right? Um they're going to be growing in in in what we're trying to achieve, but in terms of having something that is more on a professional level, it might take a bit longer. That's what I would have said before. Now that's still the case, but the gap between knowing the fundamentals and being able to write professional level code that's that has shrunk because that's where AI can speed you up. So my answer is still and you might say of course I would like I'm my job is to teach Python but that's why I'm still here doing it and having gone to do anything else because I think if anything learning the fundamentals of Python now opens a lot more doors because of generative AI than it ever did in the past. So that's my view. Um I'm yet to see real world code that has been written entirely by AI with no human input at all. There are some fun projects, some fun games you might see on on social media. Um, and that's great, but in terms of real world code, then you need to have that that trust in the code. And that's trust that so far still needs to come from from human programmers with some experience. Will we ever get there? Who knows? But I think when AI gets to the point where programmers are not needed, I think society as a whole has a bigger problem there or bigger challenge because that's the same time when AI will take over many other jobs, teachers, lawyers. So we may get there but this AI is not there yet. I think this is this the AI we have now is the AI that is making us more proficient as programmers and easier to move up the proficiency level. I certainly found that my case whenever there's been a topic which I'm not very familiar with whether it's programming or in other areas um the more I know about the topic the quicker I can use AI to get me up to speed. So I'm happy to talk more about AI and where it all fits in. Um that's my view and uh I think it's many people within the programming environment view. I think I think we we're seeing companies who are quick at laying off developers starting to hire them again now because they've realized we have code here but we need someone to fix the code that AI has written. Um let me have a look uh back to the questions. How to master the basics first? Is there any method you can teach us? Um I could talk for two hours about this question. Right. So I've mentioned it before and I mentioned again. And I think it's a mixture between learning the theory well and not skipping the theory. Some people say I'm just going to go and write code um follow a tutorial and that's good enough for me. I think understanding the theory and understanding a bit what's happening underneath the surface is really important but because think of it as the foundations of a building, right? You need them there. You might not see them later on when you build a building, but they need to be there. But theory alone is not enough. It's learning the theory and then working on projects. Ideally, projects that you've come up with, things that you really want in your life. Maybe you want to automate something. Maybe there's something you're doing on a spreadsheet at the moment and you think, can I do this better? Or exercise projects like the ones we'll do in this course. So, I think it's finding those um it's finding the balance between learning material well, but then applying it in projects and doing both. Some people tell you work only on projects. Some people tell you learn only the theory. Um I think you need to do both. That's my advice to master the basics. Um I'm um um will there be handouts or notes? So every day of the course you will have materials. So when you join the course you'll have day one here are here's all the material you have. Some of it is written tutorials, some of it is video courses. Those are your resources. Um, one thing I should mention is you will have access to these resources forever. It's not just for the eight weeks of the course, right? All the material you'll have on day one, day two, day three, all the way up to the end of the course. All the written material, all the video courses and all the recordings from our live sessions, you will have access to those for um as long as you need them. Um so the course material is the handouts and notes if you like. Um um someone said how long does it take to build real world code? That's how long is a piece of string question, right? Because it depends what the real world code is. Um it's very difficult to answer it, right? because there's some real world code that is not that difficult relatively speaking. There's some real world code that's very complicated. So my advice is um again this is a the honest answer right it's likely to take longer than you expected to think because programming is is a technical subject. It's not something you can just say, okay, good. I'm going to start from zero, spend six weeks learning Python, and then I'm going to be a prof proficient Python programmer after six weeks. You will be proficient in the fundamentals and the basics, but it's like many technical subjects, it takes time, practice, experience, and then learning more topics. So, it's very difficult to tell you how long it's going to take from zero to writing the project that you have in your mind. But um um as I've mentioned before, AI has made that a bit quicker now. Um good, good, good. I think I've answered many questions there. Um someone said, "I joined late. How many days per week and the time?" So let me share uh the link again in both chats. So it's realpython.com/live. In fact, let me go back there. There we go. Um, this session is recorded, by the way, this information session. So, those of you on Zoom, you'll get an email from me with the link. Those of you elsewhere, if you can't find it on the platform you're on, some of you are on LinkedIn, some of you on YouTube, whatever. Um, it will be on the Real Python YouTube page. Um, as soon as we finish, it should be there almost instantly. So, you'll find this live session there. Um, and all the information is at realpython.comlive. Um, so to answer your question, Fedra, it's every day. So it's 5 days a week for 8 weeks, but it's about 1 to two hours uh commitment per day. In fact, that's a perfect opportunity to take me back to my very brief summary that I built earlier. And I'll keep an eye on questions, right? So keep the questions coming if you have questions. I think I've answered. If I've missed any questions, let me know, by the way. But let me use this as a way of wrapping up going again through the key points and then if there are questions I'll answer them. If not I'll let you carry on with your day. So in summary, um key points, this is for beginners. Those who've not done any programming before or those who have started learning some of the basics, but they feel they're still beginners and they they feel like they know bits and bobs of the basics, but now