Python for Beginners Information Session

Key Takeaways

Hello. Good morning or afternoon or evening depending where you are. Welcome everyone. I'll wait a few more seconds. We're starting soon. We've started now. I'll wait a few more seconds until everyone settles in uh gets their popcorn or drinks or whatever you're doing to watch this. Or maybe you're multitasking. you're working and watching this at the same time. Um, okay. Let's assume everyone has settled in. We have a number of audiences here. Some of you are on Zoom. If you're on Zoom, you know who you are. Um, we're also streaming this on several social media platforms. I think we have YouTube, Axe, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. So, wherever you are, you know where you are. Anyway, welcome to everyone. I'm Steven and I'll be with you for the next 45 minutes, an hour, depends how many questions you have to to find out to allow you to find out whether the Spy and for Beginners course is what you're looking for at this particular time. So that's what we're talking about. Um, so to make sure you're in the right place, I'll be talking here about a course for beginners. Now, I'll be defining what beginners is. You might say, I know what beginners means. There are two types of beginners. And this course is suitable for both. So I'll tell you more about this. But if you're a fairly proficient Python programmer, you've been programming in Python for several years, possibly this is not the course for you. We do have an intermediate course as well. But in this session, I'll be giving information about the Python for beginners course. And I'll define what beginners is in a bit. Don't worry. Um now unlike the sessions in the course which are very interactive the nature of this information session is that I'm talking to you quite a lot but please do ask questions. If you're on Zoom you know where to ask on the chat of course and if you're on Zoom and you want to actually speak out please do raise your hand and ask your question that way as well. Those of you watching on social media, depending on what platform you're on, you might be able to type your question and it will pop. If you if you see me look on to my left, I've got my second screen with all the chats there. I may be able to see it there. Some platforms don't allow the chats to come through. So, ask the question. Hopefully, I'll see it in front of me. Um, if not, well, um I'm I I'll we'll get to it after the session. But please ask questions at any point. You don't have to wait till the end. And at any point you have questions, please ask me. Okay, let's make a proper start. Now, you're here to find out about the Python for beginners course, not about me. So, I'm going to keep my introduction very brief, but I am going to give you a bit of an idea of who I am. Why? Because, as I'll tell you in a bit, this is a course where the interaction between me as the instructor and you as the students is important. So, you need to know whom you're stuck with for eight weeks of this course. So, there you go. I've already told you it's eight weeks long. I'll come to that in a bit. So I'm Steven. Uh I used to be a physicist. My first profession I was a physicist. In fact, that's where I learned my coding as a tool to use in my scientific research. And um of I went through the whole usual route sort of did a PhD in physics, worked in academia for 10 12 years. And then I moved on to something different and in the last 11 12 years I've been a Python educator. So I've written a book about Python. I've written hundreds of articles you'll find running around on the web about Python. I've taught live courses, recorded courses, any any format you can think of which falls under Python education, I've probably done it. And towards the end of 2024, I joined Real Python to design and deliver these live courses. Now, you may be familiar with Real Python if you're absolute beginners. Maybe maybe I'll I'll let you I'll let it pass if you're not. But um if you've ever searched any Python related stuff on the on the web, one of the first links is probably going to be a real Python article. So in any case, if you're familiar with real Python, um if you're not, by the way, welcome to the real Python world. Um if you by the way, this says starting soon. We have started. So let me move to this one. Um very similar, right? There's a link there for anyone who wants to sort of go and read stuff as well. So if you're familiar with Real Python, you've seen the written articles, possibly you've seen some of the video courses, but as of last year, we've launched these live cohort courses, which is what I'll be talking to you uh today. So it's a format that tried and tested. We find you fine-tuned it. We think it works really well. And what I want to do today is to talk about the format of the course and the content of the course. So I'll come to this in a bit. Let me give you an overview. However, the design of this course, what we had in mind when designing this course is that we did not want a course where students need to stop whatever they're doing in their life and focus only on learning Python for several weeks. Those courses have a place, but we wanted a course that's a bit more flexible that learners can fit within their existing commitments. So the flexibility is that the way we've designed it, you should be able to do this along with other things you're doing, work, studies, walking the dog, whatever it might be. Um, so I'll tell you more about the format and the level of commitment you may want to make sure you have if you want to sort of join this course. Um, however, this is not a self-led course. This is an instructor-led course. That's me. And that and I'll tell you more what the instructor the the interactions how they will work. But this also means that there's a level of accountability. Some people want that, right? The the accountability there's an instructor, other students as well. Um, and it's moving from day to day. So if that's something that you think works for you, then you'll have plenty of that because I'll be there every day moving things forward and the motivation. Sometimes I hear lots of people who started to code in their own time and then other things took over. Whereas here you have a course, a group of learners, an instructor, you're going to be more motivated to keep going all the way to the end. So that's the general idea of our course. Um, okay. Okay, so as I said, two things I'm going to talk about today. By the way, any questions, as I've mentioned, uh, pose them at any point you want. Um, every so often you see me look to my left to see whether any questions have come in or I have some questions also down here to my right. So, if you see me look elsewhere, I'm looking at questions coming in. I may not answer them instantly, but I'll jump to questions from time to time. Two things I want to talk about today. The format of the course. Now this matters because it needs to be a format that suits you and that works for you with your current commitment. So I'll tell you about that and then you can see whether yeah that's a format that works for me. And then the content of the course. Now this is a beginner's course. So if you're an absolute beginner when I go through the content it won't mean much to you. But um I'll talk a bit about sort of the two types of beginners. those who are absolute beginners and this course is for you and those who have done a bit of the basics but still consider themselves beginners and still want to get the fundamentals right and this course also works well for you. So I'll talk more about the content um in the second part of my um chat. Okay. Um hello I can see a few people saying hello there. Hello. Um let me start with the format and to do this let me move on to a different page. Um I don't like PowerPoint slides. In fact, in my courses, you won't ever see any. Um so here what I'll do is I'm actually going to write live uh write some notes such as have something visual. So what's the format of the Python for beginners? Let me go through the key points. I'll go through them quickly just to list them down and then I'll revisit them and expand a bit more. So um I've already had a spoiler earlier. How long is this course? This is an 8week course. Um I'll tell you why it's 8 weeks and not 2 4 6 or 27 in a bit. There's a reason there there's a reason for everything we do of course. Um now that's the length of the course in number of weeks. How about within each day and it's um 2 hours let me say about two hours about two hours commitment each day each weekday um I should say. Now, I I'm saying about two hours, and I'll tell you more about how this changes, what these two hours, what do they include, what's what happens in these two hours. Um, they're not the same every day. So, I'll tell you a bit more about that in a bit. Now, this is not a self-led course and we have live components of this course. So, there are three live sessions every week. Once again in a bit I'll expand on what these sessions are, how they work, what we do in them, etc., etc. These are small groups. So there's 10 students per cohort. This is another key point. I'll describe how the course will work and you'll see why we need small groups in order to have those discussions, conversations. In this information session, I'm talking to you very much and you can sort of ask me questions by chat in the sessions in the course. That won't be the case. will will be interacting a lot more. And finally, I'll just write it down for now. Um, the forum sounds simple, but I think it's such an important part of this course. So, that's a snapshot of what the course looks like from a format point of view. So, hopefully this starts to give you an idea of what things are like um and importantly whether this works for you. Now, let me go through it a bit more. Um, why eight weeks? There's nothing special about eight. Exactly. But here's our reasoning. We want to design a course that covers quite a bit of material. We didn't just want to scratch a bit of the basics and that's it. We wanted to cover quite a few topics. However, sometimes you see courses where it seems like whoever designed the course had a long checklist and say tick tick tick. The more c the more things we cover the better. No. Um we don't we don't want to do that either because we want every topic we cover we want to have enough time to explore it from different perspectives. Work on examples. You'll see that working on examples is an important part throughout the whole course. Um and make sure that every topic there's enough time for it to sink in so that you can truly understand it. So 8 weeks is feels like the sweet spot where you can cover quite a few topics and each one of those topics we can go into quite a bit of detail and explore it dig a bit underneath the surface and so on. Good. Um now in every one of the weekdays in these eight weeks I've almost every one of those weekdays I'll tell you why almost in a bit I've uh cured a set of content from the existing real Python material and of course each day um the curriculum follows one day after the other. So every day there's roughly 2 hours and this will include some reading material that I've created for you, some video courses to watch, some examples and some exercises for you to work on. Um not every day will be exactly the same but it will include some of those things and this is the the content that you can do in any part of the day that suits you. This is the flexible part, right? You can do it early in the morning at 5:00 a.m. in the morning if you want or at lunchtime or at dinner time or you can split it throughout the day. It's up to you. That's where the flexibility comes in and that's where we want this to we want you to be able to fit this around your existing commitments. However, there is a a commitment in time that you need to have available um throughout the course. So if you think if you're thinking now there's no way I can commit 2 hours a day for 8 weeks then you know that this is why I'm giving you the guideline at this stage. This is roughly the amount of commitment. I say roughly because some days there's a bit more content perhaps. Some days there's a bit less. Some of you may go through some content quicker others may want to reread things or review videos. So it varies slightly but roughly speaking it's about two hours of commitment each day. Now that's the the the the work you do in your own time throughout the day. But this is not a self-led course as I said and the interaction between you as students and me as the instructor is is I think really important and we will meet live three times a week. Um two of these will be Q&A sessions. This is the Monday and the Friday and each one of these is 60 minutes. Um, as it says on the tin, you know, you ask questions, I provide answers. That's not true, actually. Um, uh, the agenda is set by you. You ask questions. Um, as you're going through these two hours of material every day, you will have questions. In fact, this is one of the challenges when you're learning entirely by yourself. You read stuff and then you might have a question. Whom do you ask? or you may think you've understood something but you can't confirm that with someone in a live course like this those questions you bring them to the Q&As's there's two things you can do with those questions one of them is to bring them to the Q&A I'll tell you what the other one is in a bit um and then we discuss them in fact I sometimes like to call this a Q&A and D is for discussion because it's about you asking questions and we have a discussion you know we we meander around the topic dig underneath the surface explore the topic and of course the answer will come out of the discussion. So that's you can see that two of the three sessions are Q&As's. I think this this type of session is really important. It's your way of making sure that no question goes unanswered and then there's going to be a 90inut this is a more structured session. 90 minutes structured um session this is the Wednesday session. The difference here is that unlike the Q&As's where you ask questions and you set the agenda in the 90-minute session, I've I've got a topic number of topics to cover. Sometimes it's going to be a new topic that you haven't covered at all in these sort of two hours of work a day. Sometimes we're going to pick something you've already learned about, but we explore it in a more detail and different perspective. Uh we work on examples, etc., etc. it it every night in each session will always have two or three different things happening in it. Good. Um I can see some questions coming in. I'll I'll have a look at them in a second. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten them. So those are the live sessions. Uh everything is very informal. As I said, the sessions won't be like this. It will be us all seeing each other, hearing each other. Um, I like to say, imagine we're sitting in a coffee shop, drinking a cup of coffee or tea, having a chat about Python, even though we might be in different parts of the world on Zoom. Um, and in fact, one question I have there is about that. I'll I'll I'll address your question um in a bit. Um now uh as I've hopefully given you an idea that the sessions are very informal. It's about the conversation we have. We cannot have conversations informal conversations and exploring topics if we're a large group. So each cohort is limited to 10 students. This allows us to have that we get to know each other over the course of the eight weeks. uh there's less inhibition in asking questions and in you know saying what we think and this encourages those discussions that are such an important part of this course. We will have two cohorts running at the same time. I'll tell you more about the times of the live sessions in a bit but each cohort is is 10 students. Last but definitely not least as they say is what I think is the glue that binds everything together. Um there's a forum dedicated just for this course. So just for the students running the course at this particular time. So it's again it's a it's a it's a cozy forum with there will be both cohorts in there but in the forum it's nice to have more discussion and the idea of the forum is I mentioned earlier you have questions as you're going through the material every day. One way is one one way to do those questions is to bring them to the next Q&A. Another way is to post them on the forum straight away. The forum is there 24/7. I do sleep from time to time, but when I'm when I'm awake, I'm checking on the forum all the time, making sure the conversations keep going, giving feedback, etc. So, any questions you have, you ask them on the forum. I'll post regularly on the forum. Um, giving my perspective on topics, um, sort of adding a bit more. You'll be working on examples and exercises. Post your code in the forum. We can have a discussion, get feedback. So the forum is a way to keep the conversation going to keep all those conversations going throughout the whole eight weeks. Um it's not instead of the Q&As's, it's alongside the live sessions. So someone once called it a multi a multimodal course, right? You have some reading, some video courses, some live sessions, um forum, everything comes together nicely. Good. So there's probably more to say about all of these and I'll I'll I'll see whether there are any questions coming in a bit but roughly I don't want to lengthen the session too long. So I'm trying to find the right balance being brief while giving you all information. So I'll stop there in terms of the content for now and then I'll come back to it and see if there are any questions. Now before I move on to the content of the course and who this course is for what beginners means um I have a question there. Uh I find it challenging learning online or even looking at the screen. So I I've taught lots of in-person courses in the past and there is something nice about all being physically in the same room. I agree. Um you know being in 3D together uh this is not that type of course. There are pros and cons of everything. Of course the advantage here is that we all be spread in different parts of the world. Um, now coding is always on screen anyway. So in some ways the coding part when you're looking at code even when you're in a classroom you're still going to be looking at the screen. So in some ways of all the subjects that are taught online coding has slightly less of a barrier because you always have that screen there anyway unless you're going to code pen on paper. [snorts] In terms of we're on Zoom um the sessions are very informal is what I'll say. Um so yes it's you know we're in 2D but um we try to make the sessions as informal as possible. Um um and a lot of the work you're also doing in your own time. So it's not long also it's never long sessions. The longest session is 90 minutes. Again this is by design. When sometimes you might have sort of five hours on Zoom that just doesn't work. So that's also why the sessions are spread across the week and short. Um but yes uh it is the the joys as well as the difficulties of delivering courses online. Um if you had any specific aspect of that um um let me know for whoever asked the question. Um what is the timing? Someone asked me VJ. Um I'll come to that in a bit. Uh the live session. So most of the work you do every day, you do it in your own time, but the fixed points of the course are live sessions. I'll show you the times in uh a minute or so. Um and Steve asked, "Do the weekly meetings include Sundays?" No. Uh the weekly the live sessions are Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I'll show you the times in a second, but not Sundays. And the content, we've designed the content to cover Monday to Friday over the whole eight weeks. Of course, you can do stuff in the weekend if you want, but we did not set material for Saturdays and Sundays. So, when I say 8 weeks, 2 hours a day, that's for the weekdays, not Saturday and Sunday. Um uh so Jane said I taught it's only three days. Monday, Friday for Q&A, Wednesday for social sessions. So yes, live sessions are three times a week, but there's more content. So let me go through this again. Um you have content every day that you go through in your own time. So every day there's content um stuff you need to do. Um reading video courses, examples you work on, exercises you work on. That's every weekday of the course. We meet live three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And the forum is there throughout the whole week, including the weekends. Um, I do keep an eye on the forum in the weekends as well. Um, Aaron, um, you haven't missed any of that. Uh, the course start end I'll show you in a second. And in terms of incidentally, the page I'm going to show you in a bit. Uh let me paste the paste it um paste it in the chats and for those who can't see it in the chat um some platforms don't show the chat of sending I'll show you the link in a bit u in terms of dates pricing booking etc. Um have a look at that page. Uh there was one other question there. Uh do we use AI in this course to learn fast? We do discuss AI. Yes. So AI is something we discuss. It's part of the modern programming is changing. Uh AI has made learning to program uh I don't want to say easier. It's changed how we learn to program and it's changed how we program. Um I'm happy to expand on this towards the end of session if people want more about the AI interface. But we do talk about AI. Yes. Um we don't do we don't use AI in every session because what we really want to do here is learn Python the basics ourselves. But of course AI is now part of programming. So we use it we discuss it um throughout the course. Um okay let me now I said there are two parts to what I want to talk about today. This is the format. So eight weeks about two hours every weekday we meet three times live every week 10 students per cohort with the forum gluing everything together. Now let me talk about content. So let me move to um and this is the page I've linked to those who couldn't see my post. It's if you go to realpython.com/live and then there are two courses there. You want the Python for beginners course and that brings you to this page. So, um either the link I've posted in the chat, but if you can't see that, some some social media platforms don't show the links for whatever reason, real python.com/live, click on python for beginners, and you'll be on this page. Um, now this is a course for beginners and there are two types of beginners. Uh, the beginners can mean two things in programming and typically in in a course we're going to have an even mix of both. We've run we've run this course already a couple of times last year and typically have a 50/50 m uh split between those beginners who are absolute beginners. They've for all intents and purposes they've never done any Python before. They've never done any programming before. If you are in that the if the description applies to you then this course is for you. There is no prior knowledge needed to join this course. So if you've never done any programming before, this course is perfect for you. We will start from the basics. Um in fact when I show you week one there, you can see that week one is starting with the basics. Um there are however some who have already done some self-arning perhaps or have learned some um uh some of the basics and maybe can write some basic programs, but they still feel they're beginners. they still feel like they don't fully understand the fundamentals and they're not ready to move on then this course is also for you. Now, of course, some things, especially in the beginning, you might have seen them before and you might say, "Oh, yeah, I've done if statements." Great. That will serve as revision. Although, you'll find that my approach is to not just introduce how to do stuff. How do you write an if statement? That's all well and good. But why do things work the way they do? So, even if you've covered some of the basics, I I'm sure you'll find that you'll understand them at a at a slightly deeper level. or maybe maybe not slightly at a deeper level um because of the way we're going to sort of really make sure we understand things and then we're going to build on top of that. So for those of you who have done a bit of coding before um uh you can have a look roughly at the topics we're going to be covering. So as I said no prior knowledge needed. So week one we have to start from the basics um and these are what you see here. If you've never done coding before, none of these terms will make sense to you. Don't worry. Trust me, these are the basic building blocks. You cannot do anything in programming without these basic building blocks. So, you have to start here. Um, good. You'll find also here, I'm going to highlight this here. Every week you'll see these mini projects. So yes, we're going to cover the the theoretical stuff if you like, but we we want to from the beginning, right from week one, start putting it all together. And the best way knowing the stuff, knowing the tools is great, but you need to know how to use them together. And that's where the projects come in. So we'll have many projects. As you can imagine, the mini project in week one will be fairly simple because it's only going to be using the topics we've covered in week one. And then you see that we'll have many projects work. We will be working on these many projects in parallel throughout the whole course. Um now dates and times. So you see here that the dates and times. So the course starts on the 2nd of February. So this is the first session. Live sessions are every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for the whole eight weeks. The times this is showing me my time zone here. I'm based in the UK. When you have a look at the page I've sent you, um it will show you the times in your own your time zone and therefore you can see whether these times work for you. You only need one of these sessions, right? Not both. So either one or the other. Um so if one of these times times works for you. Um have a look at this on your own browser so that you can see it in your own time zone. As long as one of them works for you, you say, "Yeah, that's good." Then when you book, we'll ask you which session you want to be on. So that's where the times of the sessions are and they're always Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Just remember the Wednesday one is a bit longer. So they all start at the same time, but the Wednesday one is a 90-minute session. Good. Um, so we've covered some of the basics on week one. Um, and then we move on. Another really important aspect in programming is what we call iteration, repeating stuff. Often we write computer programs to do a task that we humans find either too lengthy to do or too boring to do or we want the computer to speed things up for us to make things easy for us and often there's a repetition involved there. So repeating stuff is an important part of programming. Um the general term for this is iteration. Some of the tools are things like for loops but not only for loops there are others as well and then we're also going to start talking about so data is programming is about doing stuff but you also have information information you want to store and we have different types of boxes if you like to store different type of information and lists is one of these types of boxes. So we're going to start learning about how to store data in our program and what the difference is between the different types of data. Um you can see more mini projects there. So every week as you can imagine the mini projects get a bit more complex as we move on because now in week two we can use the topics from week one and the topics from week two. So this gives this gives us more tools to make our project more interesting and more complex. Week three, um, another cornerstone of programming and this is when you take a bit of code and you package it in a way that you can easily reuse it from time to time whenever you need it. That's what we call functions. Being able to define functions is is the superpower in programming. Um, so we're going to work on this on week three. We want to understand how to define functions, how to use them, and functions may look simple at first, but there's a lot more to them than meets the eye. So, we we'll we'll make sure we dig a bit underneath the surface as well. And surprise, surprise, more mini projects building on this. In week two, I talked about lists and I said this is one of the types of boxes we use to store information in. It's not the only one. So in week four, we're going to focus on more data structures. And we're not just going to, however, have a tick box. Oh, here's here's this data structure and this one and this one and this one. We're also going to look what's what are the similarities and differences between them. What are the characteristics that they have in common or that defer? Because one of the hardest things in programming once you've learned about lots of data structures is which one do I need for my project? And understanding how these data structures work and their advantages and disadvantages is as important if not more important than learning the the syntax of how to use them. So that's more on data structures and of course more mini projects. Um then we move on in week five um to a topic in programming called object-oriented programming. Some of you may have heard of this if you're an absolute beginner. Um all of this is you know random words for you. That's fine. They'll all make sense by the end of this course. I I promise you. Now, object-oriented programming, um, OOP for short, is often considered a slightly more intermediate topic. So, why did I put an introduction to OOP, an intermediate topic in a beginner's course and there are two reasons for this. The first one is that we some this is a style of programming. Um, the fancy word is a paradigm. Uh so the first reason is that this paradigm, this style of programming is really important in modern programming. Some people love it, some people hate it, but it doesn't matter. It's there. It's part of programming. At some point, you need to understand it well in order to move on in programming. And therefore, it's a good time to introduce some of its basics early on so that we're ready for when we expand our knowledge into OP. So that's the first reason. It's an important style of programming in itself. But there's a second even more important reason I think why I've introduced this in the beginner's course and that is that Python is built on top of these OOP principles. So the language itself, Python as a language itself is inherently an object-oriented programming language. Even if you don't see these things, you don't need to know about object-oriented programming to write basic Python code. But if you want to understand it, and in this course, we are going to be making sure we understand how everything links together. Then we need to understand the basics of object-oriented programming because that's how Python works. The the Python plumbing if you like is all OOP based. So if you want to understand how the language the language works, we need to understand some of the basics of OP. Um week six we talk a bit more about object-oriented programming and then we talk about um I love this word debugging and for those who are coming from a non-programming background this is a strange word right because programming is one of the few professions or or fields of study where we accept that we all make errors. No matter how proficient a programmer is, no, no programmer will ever tell you, "I never make errors when coding." Um, bugs are another word for errors. Bugs are when things don't work the way you expect them to in programming. They will always happen. Of course, the more proficient you get, the type of bugs you put in your code will be different, but they'll always be there. So understanding how to find these bugs, how to understand them and how to fix them is such an important part of programming. And we will uh introduce some of the the the art and science of debugging in week six. Um I'll have a look a few more questions coming in. I'll have a look in a second. So that's weeks one to six. Weeks one, it's an 8week course. Remember, weeks 1 to six are where we're covering all of these topics. Weeks seven and eight are a bit different because weeks seven and eight, we will focus entirely on a project. Now, you've seen me showing you these mini projects throughout weeks one to six. These are, as the name says, small projects as we go along. But in the final two weeks, we're going to we're not going to introduce any new topics. I mean there might be the odd thing as we go along but the focus of week seven and eight is to work on a project. We'll pick a project to all work on together. Why? Because an important part of this course is the interaction we have, the discussions we have amongst us. So if everyone is doing their own project, we can't have those discussions. But it doesn't mean we'll all have exactly the same code at the end. We will all go down slightly different parts. And the way the last two work two weeks work is as follows. So um I've split the project into 10 units because there are 10 days two weeks and every day there'll be here's the task for today off you go work on it and you try to work on that task. There's the forum of course to have discussions and to paste your code uh post your code and discuss it etc etc and then towards the end of the day I might pick all of those ideas that you've had the code you've posted come up with a reference version if you like and say okay good at the end of week one here's my reference version you don't all have to have the same version but here's my reference version and then that sets us for day two where we have something else to do on the project and day after day this project will grow. There are two reasons why we do this project. Two important well more, but two broad reasons. Firstly, we're using all the topics we've learned in weeks 1 to six. So, we're making sure we really understand them. We really understand what all of these things mean and do and how they join together. But it also shows us how to design a project. Every project is there to solve a problem. So, how do we go from here's the problem I'm trying to solve as a human? and I understand this problem. How do I go from that to here are these lines of code that solve the problem? That's not an easy step. So, we'll talk a lot about that. Um, so that's week seven and eight. And this brings me to to hopefully this gives you a good idea of what's in it. Uh if you want to read through this in more detail um I've posted the links there or real python.com/live click on python for beginners and uh you can take all your time to look through it for those who maybe joined at some later point the live sessions if you go to the this page um I'll post the link again the times shown here will be in your time zone so I'm based in the UK which is why it's showing me the UK time zones when you go on this page it will show you the times in your time zone um and this leads me to a question. Um, someone asked, where was it? Where was it? Where was it? Um, how do we decide which one to attend? Oh, sorry that no, this wasn't a question. I misread it. I thought, how do we decide which of these sessions to attend? So, uh, pick the pick the time that suits you, right? Um Um, um, whichever time is more convenient in your day. Um, Juan was asking a different question, beginner or intermediate. Um so for those who some people are obviously beginners and they have no issue saying yeah this course is for me. Um we also have an intermediate course. So those of you who are not sure have a look at an intermediate course but get in touch with me. I'm more than happy to talk to people individually. Those of you on Zoom um so Juan you've asked a question you're on Zoom there. You have an email from me already. You'll get another one later today. Feel free to reply to the email. I'm happy to have one-to-one conversations to find your specific where you are specifically and then I can guide you whether I think the beginner's course or the intermediate course is more suitable. Um so anyone feel free to contact me. If anyone is not on Zoom, you're on one of the social media platforms, you'll either find my profile directly there. I'm not on all of them. Or if not, just contact Real Python and say, "Hey, we were talking to that Steven Chap there on Friday. can you link me to him so I can ask a question and uh you know the people in the real Python office will connect you with me. So anyone who is not sure about something about this course which uh I'll try to answer it here but sometimes it's very specific to your needs. So you know we can't talk about your whole life story in this live session. Um so I'm happy to deal with those individually. Um just contact me separately. Um good that covers uh all the questions. Uh no maybe not. Let me have a quick look. Um, so let me post the links again in terms of uh all of the relevant uh dates, times, cost, how to book, etc. All the admin stuff. Anything specifically to do with the admin side of things. Um, if you email info@realpython.com, they'll also be able to help. This is if something specific to do with admin or whatever it is. But anything to do with the course, whether it's right for you, um, I can answer here or separately. Um, okay. Let me have a quick look to make sure I haven't missed anything. Um, thanks for information about Python. If you give us a road map to us. Um, sorry if I'm not sure what you mean by the road map. Feel free to um, add a bit more there. Will this course dwell into Python uses for draw? I don't know what draw is which probably answers your question. Um no I'm not sure what draw is so sorry. Um we'll be covering the basics of Python now. Uh so let me answer the question differently. Um we're not going to look at any specific application of Python here. Why? Because the fundamentals of Python are the same. Whether you want to go on to do data science, um web development, um whatever it might be, um front end, back end development, the basics of Python are the same. The fundamentals are the same. You need to know those fundamentals and you need to know them well before you can go and do any applications with Python. So this course focuses on what do I need to know to understand the fundamentals of programming, specifically the fundamentals of Python. And then of course you can either independently or with with more help from us or from elsewhere whatever you want to do you can then start to go down different directions. I often give this analogy which I um I quite like. Imagine you're in a park with one of those old trees right slightly big trees. So you have the big tree trunk and then at a certain height the trunk starts to branch out into well branches. That's why they're called branches, right? So the branches are all the specific applications of programming, data science, web development, whatever it might be. The tree trunk is the core knowledge you need. So before you can get to any of those branches, if you want to climb the tree, you have to climb the tree trunk. That's the fundamentals. Those are the fundamentals. That's what we'll be covering in this course. Um uh so so this is a Yeah. So uh thanks Ker. So in the link I've provided let me provide it again. Um there are details about pricing for uh you want to check that this works for you by all means have a look there and any any of the admin related stuff feel free to have a look at uh the link on the page etc etc. Um now I have more or less covered everything I wanted to cover. So, what I'm going to do is um any questions you have, please keep sending them. I'll give you a quick recap. So, let me go to two different places. Um so, first of all, where was this? Um real python.com/live. The link I've sent you takes you specifically to the Python for beginners page, but this one is easier if if if you don't have the link in your chat. Um realpython.com/live and then you click for Python for beginners. So, that's where you find all the information you need. Let me go to my mind map again. This is the the format of the course. So, let me finish off um unless there are specific questions you want me to answer with a quick reminder of uh I I can actually think of a few more things I want to say. Um so, an overview plus I'll add a few more things I've forgotten earlier. Um this course is an 8week course. The next Python for beginners starts on the 2nd of February. So, that's a few weeks away. Um, and then it's eight weeks from then it's uh there's content every single weekday roughly roughly a commitment of two hours a day. It might vary slightly. And if some people say, "Oh, on a Wednesday I'm particularly busy because I have lots of meetings or whatever. What do I do?" Like, well, uh, well, Wednesday is the live session today, but let me say Tuesday as an example. It's fine if you don't have enough time on the Tuesday, but then you catch up on the Wednesday or you know you're going to be busy on the Tuesday, so you do a bit extra on the Monday. That's perfectly fine. So, it's roughly two hours a day. Um the interactions we have are really important and those interactions will happen in two ways. In the live sessions, we have three and a half hours every week of live sessions. A lot of them are driven by you, the questions you ask. So this is you decide what we talk about. And then there's the forum. So I'm skipping to the forum there. The forum is where the conversation keeps going throughout the whole week and small groups because we cannot have these conversations, these discussions if we are 50 people in a room. So small groups. Um a few more questions I'm sometimes asked. In fact, I can I think I think I I'm not sure whether I spotted this question earlier there. uh the live sessions in the course are recorded. Now I encourage you to join live because the interaction we have is is is an important part of these live sessions. But if you have to miss a session because you have a meeting or whatever your internet provider decided to, you know, um, crash on the day, the sessions are recorded, so you'll get access to all the recordings. You can watch them later. Or sometimes you were live in a Q&A, for example, we've had a discussion, you thought, I want to go and listen to the discussion again. So then you have the recording you can go and um review the um the session um and all the content all the material that we provide you for the for the whole 40 days of the course all the live sessions and all the content on the forum you will have access to them for not just for the eight weeks but for um as long as you want them as long as you need them after the course as well. So all the content you'll have for forever. Um from my side I think I have covered everything. Uh at one point briefly on Zoom I saw a hand raised but then it went down again. It might have been a mish but if someone wanted to ask something and you still want to ask it please do. Um so I will go back to my final page. So, that'll keep that link there. And what I'll do is I'll finish off um I'll wrap up in in a second. I'll then stay on in the background in case someone is frantically typing a question saying, "Wait, wait, wait. I haven't finished." So, I'll I'll keep checking on the chats for another minute or so. But thank you all for coming. Hopefully, the aim of the session was to help you think, look, this course is not for me or yes, this course may be for me. Let me find out more. Hopefully, if the format is something that works for you and if the content is at the level you're at, hopefully I'll see you for I'll see you on the 2nd of February and I'll see you for eight full weeks after that. Um, Aaron, let me uh come back. Oh, um, Aaron has a question. So, I think I think I've seen your question on the chat, but since you've Go ahead, Aaron. Uh yes, Stephen is the course free or is there a fee involved? >> So this is a paid for course. So in the link I'm going to post it again in the chat. Um you'll find all the details about um cost. So this is this is a very intensive course, right? So I as an instructor will be guiding all the students every day. We'll be meeting three times a week, but I'll be there guiding you on the forum every day. So this is very much a um a guided course for 8 weeks. Um so in the link I've just sent in the um in the chat you have all the details etc etc. So have a look. Uh you know this course is for you if the format works, the pricing works, the the the content works, everything works. Um, if anyone is in doubt, just contact me and I'll help answer those questions as as best as I can. Good. Now, any other questions before I let you go on with your day? Um, it is a Friday, so enjoy the rest of your day. Afternoon or maybe morning for some. Yeah, it might be morning for some of you, afternoon for me. Um, enjoy the weekend and hopefully I'll see you either on the 2nd of February for this Python for beginners course or maybe at a future date or somewhere else in the real Python world or or in the Python world in general. So, thank you for joining and uh a reminder, get in touch with me if you're not sure whether this course is for you. Bye-bye.