Python for Beginners Information Session

Key Takeaways

Hello. Hello. Hello everyone. Good morning, afternoon, evening depending on where you are. I'll wait for a few more seconds while everyone settles in. We've got a few audiences here. Some of you are on Zoom. Well, if you're on Zoom, you know who you are. And there will be some of you watching on. We're streaming this on several social media platforms as well. So, if you're on whichever platform you're on, well, hello again. Good. I think everyone has settled in. Got your popcorn ready to go. Brilliant. I'm Steven. I'll be with you for the next 45 minutes or so, depending how many questions you have to talk about real Python's Python for beginners course. So the aim of the session is to give you an idea on what the course is about, how it runs, the format, the content, so that if you're thinking this might be the course for me, then hopefully by the end of the session, you have a better idea on whether this is the right thing for you or or not. Um, I'll I'll be talking about the format of the course and the content of the course. Ask me questions at any point you want. Um, if you see me looking on my my left, whatever it is for you, I've got my second screen there and I've got all the chats. So, I should be able to see your comments whether you're on Zoom, whether you're on social media platforms. Some of them don't send the comments to me, but most of them do. So, if you put a comment wherever you are, I should be able to see it. Um, so ask questions at any point you want. I will have plenty of time at the end for questions as well, but don't wait till the end. Just ask your questions at any point. And from time to time, I'll have a look on my left. If there are any questions, I'll I'll answer them as we go along. Good. Um, just to make sure we're all in the right place, I'll be talking about a course for beginners today. I'll define what beginners is in a bit. Sort of obvious, but I'll tell you who this course is for in a bit. But if you are, if you've been coding in Python for 20 years and that, you know, you're proficient in Python, uh, this is not the course for you. We do have intermediate courses as well. So if that's you, um we do have other courses, but this session is explaining how the Python for beginners course works. Now you came here to find out about the Python for beginners course, not to find out about me. So I'll keep my intro really brief. And the only reason I'm going to tell you who I am is because these are live courses. I will be running these courses. So in some ways, you want to know who you'll be um talking to talking to um as we go along. Um, I've seen some raised hands there from Zoom. Those of you on Zoom, by all means, I was going to say if you want to, uh, ask questions, um, do ask me, uh, Kani, but you should be able to. >> Okay. Thank you, Stephen. >> Go ahead, >> Stephen. I'm I'm calling from Togo in West Africa. I have some questions I want to share with you. >> Perfect. >> The first question. Do you mind do you mind if I get started a bit and then I'll come to questions in a bit just so that we've gone we've got we've got started a bit. So um I do encourage questions. Um are you fine if if I come back to questions in a bit just so that I've I've got going a bit. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Perfect. Perfect. So um yeah I'll come back to you and if you prefer to speak for questions that's perfectly fine as well. It actually gives everyone a break from listening to me. So I'll come back to um anyone who wants to type their questions send them in and then at various parts in the session I'll stop and have a look at questions and I'll come back to you Colani as well. Um okay so very briefly I'm Steven um I'm a physicist by training. So my first profession was as a physicist. In fact that's where I've learned my programming. Um so I came through programming via the science route. I needed it as a tool for my physics research um etc etc. And then about 10 12 years ago I moved on from the science world. I started working as a Python educator. I've been sort of working in Python, teaching Python for the last 10 12 years. I've taught all ages from seven year olds all the way up to whatever um whatever age um all levels absolute beginners to more advanced intermediate courses. So, so I've been sort of teaching Python, writing about Python, running courses about Python for a while. Um, I've joined Real Python uh two years ago um with the aim to set up and run these live courses. So, um I've designed these courses. I'll be running them. So, hopefully I should be in a good place to answer any questions you have about the format, the content, how they will run, etc., etc. Um, okay. >> [clears throat] >> Many of you may be familiar with real Python. If not, welcome to Real Python. But if you're familiar with real Python, in fact, when you go and Google something to do with Python, often one of the first hits is going to be some real Python article. So, you probably have seen the real Python articles about all sorts of topics. Um, of course, if you're a absolute beginner and you've never done any Python at all, maybe you haven't yet Googled anything, but um once you do, you'll find Real Python coming up there. Um you may or may not have seen some of the video courses but as of last year we started running these live cohort courses. Um we've run quite a few of them already last year the format so the format today I'll be explaining the format of the course as well as the content and um we've been running this format uh quite a few courses last year. So it's tried and tested we find you fine-tuned it. It sort of works well. So I'll I'll be telling you more about it as we go along. Um so the aim of these courses we wanted them to be uh flexible, thorough um and to sort of try to get the best of both worlds. What do I mean by this? We want the flexibility so that you can fit the learning around your existing commitments. This is not a course where you have to give up everything in your life for a number of weeks and focus only on this course. No, we wanted to design a course that you can fit within your existing commitments. Of course, there is a time commitment and I'll talk about that shortly, but it is meant to fit within your existing commitments. So, that gives you the flexibility and I'll say more about flexibility in a bit. But it's also a live course with a real instructor. That's me. I'm not I'm not an AI bot, I promise you. Um and the advantage of that I think is that you have someone to guide you um someone to answer your questions. Um someone to keep you accountable well not just me but as a group you know we we'll be moving together as a group day after day and sometimes that accountability means that some people start learning to code and then other things come in the way whereas with a course like this you sort of want to keep moving on and and that also keeps the motivation going. So I think this type of course gives you the best of both ways. Um okay so as I've said I'll be talking about format and about uh content. Let me start with format and let me move on to I'm going to write some notes as I go along. One thing you see that I I don't like to use PowerPoint slides. Um when I when I run sessions you you won't see many of them. So even here what I'm going to do is I'm going to write notes as I go along rather than having a pre-prepared slides. Um so first of all who is this course for? It's a Python for beginners course. So no prior knowledge is needed for this course. Now some of you may be absolute beginners. You've never done any Python before. You're in the right place. This course is for you. However, some of you may have done some of the basics already. You know you've learned some for loops. You've learned y loops. You've learned functions. But you still consider yourself a beginner. you still feel like you haven't quite mastered the basics and then this course is also for you. Um, we've run this course before and we've had a nice mix of people who have never done Python before and those who have done a bit of Python but still want to get that the foundations really well in place. So this course is is for both of those beginners. If however you are someone who's very proficient in Python, probably this course is not for you. So if you're in doubt, we can discuss it today or I'm more than happy to have chats with people individually if you want to find out whether this course is specifically for you. So that's for you what beginners means, right? The absolute beginners or those who still consider themselves beginners even though they've done a bit of the basics. Now let me give you a quick summary of the key points to give you a sense of what the format of the course is. then I'll come back to all of these points and I'll add a tiny bit. Um I won't be talking long today so I'm going to go quick but then if you have questions we can sort of slow down with your questions later on. So first of all how long is this course? This is an 8week course. I'll tell you a bit why we've chosen 8 weeks and not shorter or longer in a bit. So that's a commitment in terms of number of weeks. In terms of the commitment within the day, um it's roughly 2 hours commitment per day. Uh I'll tell you later what is involved in these two hours. It will sort of change a bit from day to day, but roughly it's two hours commitment per day. And that means that if your schedule is so busy that you don't think you have two hours per day, per weekday over an 8week period, then again, probably this course is not for you. um it is flexible but if you want to gain from it then you should have that sort of that that knowledge that you'll be able to uh allocate some two hours per day. Um now some people say oh does it have to be two hours every day? What if I'm busy one day? That's perfectly fine right? So it's two hours per day on average. If you have a busy day you can catch up the following day or you know work a bit ahead the day before. That's perfectly fine. But broadly speaking you want to have that time available. Um I'll say more about what's included in those in a bit. Um now uh we have three live sessions per week. The live sessions are such an important part of this course. So I'll tell you more about them in a second. Uh how many on each course? It's 10 students per cohort. So in each group, 10 students. Um and finally, I'll write it down. The forum, I'll tell you more about the forum later on. The forum, I think, is such an important aspect of this course. It sort of binds everything together. Um, now, uh, before I dive in, let me have a look at questions. And I know that, uh, Colani, you had a question. So, I'll give you the I'll give you the microphone again. Feel free to ask. Anyone else who has questions, please feel free to uh, if you want, you can type them in the chat or in whatever platform you're in. or if not go ahead. Go ahead. >> Okay. Uh thank you once again. Uh as I was telling you, I I I am calling from uh Togo in West Africa. We are a French country. >> Welcome. >> So please Okay. Welcome. Thank you. Uh so my first question is that it it is possible that the main courses we will have to have the translation of discusses in French. Is it possible? >> That is the first question. >> Um so unfortunately no is my answer. So there are two aspects of it. Right. So >> the content we have real python is in English. Um at the moment there are no immediate plans on having it available in other languages. So the existing content whether it's written or video courses in English. The live sessions um will be in English as well and there is no nothing in place at the moment to translate them I'm afraid. So so so the first answer is this will be entirely in English and there's nothing in place for um from our side for translating the content. >> Okay. No problem because my level is not uh very bad but not good or good also. So if I I can >> I get it. Yeah. >> Yes. I can follow the courses but if I have the content in French it will be more efficient. soon soon soon I think we'll have the AI tools to do all of this translation live as we go along but for the time being we don't have anything in place unfortunately >> okay thank you uh my second question is that you know our area because we are in echoas it is not possible to uh to send to transfer money uh more than I think $1,000 so as the price is two Yes. >> So what I'll say is I I I I I know um because that's a very and I don't have the answer to your question, right? So I'm not involved in sales etc. Um if you can email uh the real Python main email address and they will be able to find a solution for you if you want to join the course. Um I know that sometimes there are technical issues. >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I don't have the answer and and also it might not apply for everyone but if you email real Python so info@realpython.com um Dan will answer your question and he'll be able to give you all the technical aspects on how to deal with that. There will be there will be a solution I'm sure because I know we've done similar things in the past. >> Okay, thank you. >> Perfect. Any more questions? Let me know. Again, those of you on Zoom feel free to do what Colani just did and raise your hand. Anyone else? Um, feel free to send questions in. Um, yes, someone there mentioned uh the the this stream can be translated. Um, however, the the sessions in the course will not be streamed like this. So, I can't promise translations is what I'm saying. Um, I know there are tools that can do it for you, but we are not as real Python. We're not doing the translations on our side, so I can't vouch for them. Okay. Um, let me go to these points in a bit more detail, not too much, and then I'll move to the content of the course. Um, eight weeks. Why eight weeks? We want a course where we're covering quite a bit of material. We don't just want to sort of cover one or two topics. But we don't want a course, sometimes you have these courses where it feels like a tick box. You're sort of racing through topics. Good cover, cover, cover. We don't want that either. We want to be able to with each topic spend a bit of time to let it brew or let it digest, discuss it, work on examples and that sort of thing. So 8 weeks feels like a good length of time to give us enough time to cover quite a few topics. um we don't want to go longer because the moment it start the moment the course starts to get longer than 8 weeks energy levels start to sap and uh so 8 weeks feels like the right length for what we want to be able to cover quite a bit of material and to have the time to cover it in detail. We've run as as I've mentioned, we've run this format for quite a few courses already in 2025. Uh it was always eight weeks. They seem to work very well. So, we're quite happy with the length of time. Now, within those eight weeks, every weekday, um there's going to be content roughly around 2 hours a day. And I say roughly because some days it's going to be a bit more, some days it's going to be a bit less. It also depends on you. Some people go through material a bit quicker, some people go through material a bit slower, but roughly it's about two hours commitment per day. And the way it works is as follows. Every day of the course, every weekday of these eight weeks, I've cured content for you from the existing real Python material, taken some things from the written articles, some things from the video courses, and every day there's a curriculum for you to follow. Um, there are some exceptions. And I'll tell you a bit when we talk about the live sessions, but broadly speaking, every day of the course, you'll have day one, here's the material to go through. And that material is is material. You can go through it at any time of the day that suits you. You might want to do it in the morning before breakfast or before taking the dog out for a walk at lunchtime when you come back from work, study, whatever in the evening. It's up to you. So that's where the flexibility is. The content is there. Ideally, you should cover it on the day so that you keep keep track with our course, but you have the flexibility on when to cover that material. Um, now that's not it. That's a key part of how we're going to transmit the content to you. But a really important part is the interaction between me as the instructor and you as the students. And part of that is through the live sessions. So, we're going to have three live sessions a week. Um, two of them are Q&A sessions. These will be Mondays and Fridays and these are 60 minutes each. Why did I write 50? 60 minutes each. And as this as it says on the tin Q&A, the idea is that as you're going through the daily material, the reading the reading and watching the videos, you will have questions. There's no doubt about it. In fact, one of the main issues with learning independently normally is um you have questions and you have no one to ask. Well, we're solving the problem because that's where I come in as as your instructor, as your guide. So, the Q&As's are very much as you go into the material, you'll have questions. One way of answer of dealing with those questions is to bring them to the Q&A sessions. And I often like to say that these are Q&A and D sessions. The D is for discussions because it's not about you asking questions, me giving you an answer. It's about you asking questions. and we use that question as a way of sparking a discussion between the group and getting to understand the topic at a deeper level. So that's uh Monday and Friday's live sessions. The Wednesday session is a 90 minute this is a more structured session. Um and this is sort of um session. This is part of main curriculum. So on Wednesdays typically there won't be any additional content for you to do on your own. Instead, we're co we'll cover the content live u you and I in in this session and the structured session will be part covering new material part picking on some topics you've covered and exploring them perhaps at a deeper level or from a different perspective working on examples and projects. You'll see that there are lots of projects lots of lots of practical work throughout the whole eight weeks. So that's our uh three live sessions per week. So three and a half hours uh every week where we'll meet live and I'll show you later there will be two sessions in a day so you can choose a time slot that suits you. I'll show you these times in a bit. Um every group is 10 students and we wanted to keep each group small because the conversations we have the discussions we have are really important unlike this session where I am talking to you. Yes, you can, as we've seen from Colani, you can talk back and you can ask questions and text, but in the course itself, it will be very much like I like I like to say, look, let's assume we're sitting around a coffee a table in a coffee shop drinking coffee and having a chat. That's the sort of style I'd like to run these sessions where we're all communicating with each other. It's not me talking to you, it's us talking together. And for that, you need to have a smalish group. So 10 students per cohort which enables us to have conversations. There's no nothing stopping you from asking questions, saying what you think, etc. That's such an important part of this type of learning. And finally, this is the glue that binds everything together because there's a forum specifically for this course. So it will only be for the students on the course. And the aim of the forum is to keep the conversation going throughout the eight weeks. So when I mention that you're going through the material in the day, you will have questions. There are two things you can do with those questions or you can do them both, right? Um you can either come and ask the questions at the Q&A sessions or you can simply go straight away and ask them on the forum. Um the forum is 24/7. Now I do sleep from time to time, so I won't be there 24/7, but I'll be there throughout my whole waking hours, but the forum itself is 24/7. You can go and ask questions anytime and as soon as I wake up if it's night time for me I'll be answering those questions. We'll be having discussions. So the idea of the forum is to keep those Q&As going throughout the whole eight weeks. If you're working and you will be working on exercises, you can post your exercises on the forum and then we can have a discussion on them. um discussions are such an important aspect of learning I believe and this course is centered around the chats we're going to have in the live sessions and in the forum. So that's in terms of um format. U now one thing I should have done is um I'm going to post a link. Those of you on Zoom have just received it and hopefully those of you on social media platforms. Uh it might not have got to all of you. So I'll show you the link in a bit. Um this is where all the information is. So uh yeah. So Huff said this is a this is an 8week uh course for 10 students. This is not a it's not part of the free services of Real Python. There's plenty of free articles on real Python. This is a a paid for service. So the link I've sent you there has all the information. Uh let me have a look if I've missed any questions and then I'm going to talk about content next. Um perfect. Now I think I think uh I haven't missed anything. By the way, I didn't reply to all the hellos and good mornings and afternoons. Hello to everyone. Uh let me jump to um [clears throat] this page for those of you who haven't. This is if you go to realpython.com/live then you'll be able to find the Python for beginners course. So this is the page I'm showing you here. There's all the information you need. Um but I'm going to focus on the course material and you'll be able to read through this in your own time. So I'm going to go through it a bit sort of quickly and explaining why things are the way they are. Um as I've mentioned this is a course for beginners. So we are not going to assume any prior knowledge. Some of you may have done the basics. So then some aspects of what we're going to doing, especially in the first week, may be a bit of a revision. And that's great because sometimes you may know a topic, but as we go through it in a different way, you might get to understand it better. However, if you've never done any Python before, if you've never done any programming before, that's also fine because we are going to start from the very basics. And that's what week one is. We're going to say, well, what are the fundamental building blocks we need before we can start writing any code? Um, I'm I'm not going to read through them all, right? So, for those of you who have never done any Python before, none of these make any sense. Um, if you have, then you know what they are. So, these are the basic building blocks. You cannot do anything in programming before you start from some of these topics. Now before I move on, one thing you'll notice on pretty much every week is every every week of the first six. I'll tell you the final two in a bit. We have lots of mini projects. Why? Because learning the the the core content is important. You cannot code without knowing what an if statement is, what a while loop is. But a different challenge is bringing everything together. It's like getting all the pieces of the puzzle together. And that's what working on projects allows us to do. So throughout the first part of the course, the first six weeks, we'll have lots of mini projects going throughout the whole week, which will allow us to take the topics we've learned in that particular week and bring them together in a small project. And these will go on throughout the whole week. So, so you'll find a lot of these as we go along. Um, before I move on, you can see here that in every week, these are the sessions. They're always going to be Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. If you go to this link, you'll find the session times in your own time zone. I'm based in the UK, so this is showing me the times in my time zone, but when you go to this page, uh the times shown there will be the times in your time zone. This is obviously important because the live sessions are an important part of the course. So, you want to make sure that you're available in either this one or that one. Um you will choose one of the groups. So as long as one of those times is suitable for you then that is great. So those those are the times for live sessions in your time zone when you view it on your page. So week one we start with the basics. Um week two we move on to another two rather important topics in Python. One is iteration. Fancy word. This is when we want to repeat something over and over and over again. Programming is about getting the computer to do tasks that maybe are too time consuming or too boring for us to do. That's one of the reasons we write programs. And one of those things is when you have something that's repetitive, you want to repeat something over and over and over again. And iteration is the sort of general term we use for this. Um, slightly linked to this, but not quite, is how do we store information? Storing information is such an important part of coding. Um so one way we store information is through lists. So we'll start to explore the ways we can store information in programming. Sometimes I give the analogy where when we want to store information in a program it's a bit like when you want to store things in a box at home and you have different boxes depending on what you want to store and that's what these as we call them the data types are. So lists is one of the main types of boxes if you like how we store information in. So week two we'll start exploring these topics. Um you can see that every week we have your sort of Monday, Wednesday and Friday sessions. The Q&A is on Monday and Friday and the main session on Wednesday. Moving on to week three, we go to another really important topic in programming and this is these are functions. Functions are a bit like the verbs. Um, if if Python is a if you want to have the analogy between a programming language like Python and a spoken language or a written language like English, then functions would be a bit like the verbs. They do stuff. They're the actions. And they're such an important way of taking a bit of code that does one thing, grouping it into a function, and then you can reuse it in different parts of your program. So it's really important that we learn how to create our own functions and how to use them. Week three will focus on that. Uh a reminder, you can see lots of mini projects there. So by now week three, the mini project will of course focus on functions, but it will also include the topics we've covered in weeks one and two. So the mini projects will get more complex as we go along because we can use more topics. Um we talked about lists in week two. You may recall I said this is an important type of box. It's not the only one. So here we're going to start talking about more. So data structures are these boxes if you like where we store information in. And we have different types and we want to start to understand them. But not just here are all of them. Let's learn all learn all learn about each and every one of them. First of all that's impossible because there are lots of them. But we also want to learn about how Python treats these boxes. the characteristics they have. Um, Python deals with things like data types slightly different to some other languages. So, we want to understand this from a Python perspective as well. So, you'll hear about if you've never heard of duct typing. You might think, what on earth are we talking about? Duct typing is an important philosophy in Python. So, this is a good time, you know, we'll start understanding Python's philosophy as well because it's important to understand how a language works, to understand why it's been designed that way. It's not enough to say this is how you do things. Why do we do them that way? That's an important question that we'll we'll start answering in this course and more many projects as you can see. Then we move on to week five. And weeks five and part of week six, we're going to introduce a topic. Those of you who are beginners may not have heard of object-oriented programming. Those of you who have done some Python before, maybe you've heard of this. And object-oriented programming is sometimes considered uh a a more intermediate level topic. So why did I put it in a beginner's course and there are two reasons for this? Um the first one is that object-oriented programming is a style of programming. Programmers like to use the word paradigm. It's a style of programming and it's a very important one. Um some people like it, some people don't, but it doesn't matter. It's such an important part of modern programming that you cannot avoid it forever. And I think it's a good time even in a beginner's course to start to get a a flavor of this slightly more intermediate topic which you will have to come across. So that's one reason I want to introduce early on because it's important as a topic in itself. But there's a second reason why I'm introducing OOP as we call it in a beginner's course and that's because Python as a language is built on top of this paradigm on top of this type of um programming. [snorts] So the moment you start digging just a tiny bit underneath the surface of of Python and we will be doing that because we want to sort of even though this is a beginner's course we want to sort of understand why things are the way they are. So we will do a bit of digging. Um, understanding this style of programming helps us understand how Python itself is built and how it works behind the scenes if you like. So those are the two reasons why I choose to introduce a slightly more intermediate topic in a beginner's course. We'll only cover the basics of this. So we're not going to go into all the detail of object-oriented programming. Um we then move on to move six uh more object-oriented meth topics and we finish week six with debugging. Now um not many not many u areas not not many subjects um take errors as a key part of of what they are. Um in programming doesn't matter how experienced you are your code will always have errors or bugs and therefore the process of finding these errors or bugs understanding them and fixing them is called debugging. Uh more experience doesn't mean you won't make errors. It means you'll make different ones. So understanding how to deal with these bugs is an important aspect and we'll start to explore some of these techniques in week six. Good. Now, one thing I did not mention is you've seen lots of mini projects here and you can see there's one more here. But weeks seven and eight will be different because in week seven and eight we will focus just on a project. So weeks one to six we're covering all of these topics with lots of mini projects bubbling along as we go through. But by the end of week six, we've covered all the material we want to cover and then we're going to work on a project. This is a twoe project. So week seven and eight, we will all be working on the same project. Although we might have slightly different versions, right? Because you you might want to go off in a slightly different part, but we'll all as a group work on the same project. And that's important because we want to be able to have those discussions. And if we're all working on different projects, we can't have those discussions. And as you can imagine, this project weeks seven and eight will bring in all the topics you've learned from weeks one to six and importantly bring them together into a project. So we'll also learn on how to design a project, how to make decisions, what what do I do when knowing all the tools in Python is not enough. You need to know how to put them together. So this final project um allows us to do just that. And that's our eight weeks. So, um, in terms of content, uh, if any of you have any specific questions, I'm I'm happy to dive in further, but I've sent you this link. Um, for those of you who got it on Zoom or on some of the social media platforms, you have the link. If not, it's real python.com/live and then click on python for beginners and you'll you'll be able to go through this um in your own time if you want to look at the content in detail. If you're an absolute beginner, you've never done Python before, uh none of these terms will m will mean much to you. So, it doesn't matter. Um but if you've done a bit of Python before, this will give you an idea of what we'll be covering and where. Good. This more or less brings me to the end of what I wanted to say. So what I'll do now is I'll I'll keep having a look at my questions or your questions. So um I'll please if you have questions do send them in the chats. Um before I do that however if any of you after the session so I I'll take questions in the session and I'll keep answering them for as long as there are questions but if some of you have maybe spec something something specific to your particular needs um or you think of a question after this session um please do contact me um those of you who are on Zoom you'll get an email from me so you can simply reply to that those of you elsewhere you can either find me on social media or just contact real Python directly Um, if you're watching this on social media, then you're watching it on the real Python banner, um, just contact real Python and tell them, "Oh, can I talk to Steven, please?" And they'll connect you with me. So, if any of you have questions after today, please do get in touch. Um, so questions. Well, someone said, "See you in a couple of weeks." Great. So, yeah, this course, uh, thank you for reminding me. Uh, the next course starts on February the 2nd. So, we've got about sort of uh just under a month before this course starts. Um John said, "Is there a specific code editor used for this course?" Question one. No. Now, we will recommend a number of editors that are common because this is a beginner's course. If no, if if if someone has never done Python before, then we'll guide you on these are the options you have, this is how to install them, etc., etc. But if someone has already done a bit of Python before and they already have an environment that they're comfortable with, whether it's you've mentioned VS Code, whether it's PyCharm, that's perfectly fine. Um, my philosophy is the best Python environment, the best editor is the one you're used to using. So, um, there won't be a specific one. I will use one because I need to use one. I tend to use PyCharm myself, but um if if someone already has an editor they're comfortable with, stick with that. Um GitHub interaction in this course, we're not using GitHub. And the main reason is because we wanted to focus purely on Python. So for beginners if we keep if if we add GitHub as well which is a a sep sort of slightly separate to the Python ecosystem we just want to focus on the essentials. So in the course itself we're not going to be relying on GitHub at all. Hopefully that answers your questions John. Um if not please do add more. Um okay what I'll do is I'll do a quick recap of the format. Uh if you have any questions, now it's time to ask them. So I'll recap a bit what I've said and then um look at your questions and if there are no questions, we'll wrap up at that stage. Let me go back to my mind map. So a quick reminder, first of all, this session is recorded. So if someone has joined halfway through uh those of you on Zoom, I'll send you the link by email because I have your emails. Those of you watching on some of the streaming on social media, I don't have your emails, but depending on what platform you're you're on, you'll either be able to find the recording there or if not, as I've mentioned before, just contact real Python, say, can I have the link to the recording we had? And we'll we'll send you the recording that way. So, this session is recorded. I should also mention that within the course itself, these sessions are also recorded. Now, we encourage participants to join the sessions live because I've mentioned this a few times already, but I think it's so important the interaction we have between me and you as participants. It won't be like this session right here. I'm more or less talking to you. Um, in these sessions, we'll be talking together. Um, it's so important that I think if you can't join live, it's really important. But sometimes you might have a a work meeting that's scheduled at the wrong time or or or you know something happens where you can't join a session. Then all the sessions will be recorded made available to all the participants in case you need to catch up or maybe there was a discussion that you want to listen to again afterwards because you thought there was more you can extract from a discussion we had in the live session. So these sessions will be recorded and all the content in the course um including the forum you'll get access to them forever. So the eight weeks is when we're doing learning but all the content you maintain for as long as you need. Um will there be question from you will there be a community for the interaction? So yes the forum is u is exactly that it's a place just for the students on this course. So there will be all the students doing the course at the same time and therefore it's a way for us to keep interacting with each other asking questions having conversations. So the forum is exclusively for the students doing the course at any one particular time. Another question from set uh will the use of AI tooling also be discussed? Yes. Um AI is something that is now part of programming. um from a beginner there are two important uses of AI in this context. One is to help with the coding and one is to help with the learning. They're related but different and we will talk about them um as we go along because uh AI tools are are there to stay. They're a part of coding. So yes, we will start talking about them in this course. Uh good. Uh yeah. Um uh cost and details and dates. I'll paste the link again. Um now the link doesn't go on all social media platforms. So for those who have just seen the link pop up on social media, you've seen it. Um otherwise I'll show it to you in a second on the screen. In fact, let me do that now. Let me go there. So well, we have started now. Um, if you go to realpython.com/live and then you click on python for beginners, you'll have all the information about dates, cost, how to book, uh, a lot of what I've discussed here in written format. So, so that should give you all the information you need about all the logistics, etc. Um, good. So, realpython.comlive. Let me go back to my summary then. So, I mentioned it's eight weeks. um you do need to make sure you have a bit of time every day. Um we do cover a lot in these eight weeks. So if if you know that your day is too busy, you won't be able to commit roughly 2 hours a day, then um you might not be able to get the most out of the course. I've mentioned this before, it doesn't have to be exactly two hours per day, right? So if you know that Wednesday is always busy for you, for example, well, you can obviously catch up a bit on the Tuesday and the Thursday before. Um, but roughly speaking, it's good if you move along with the course. It's roughly going to be around two hours per day. Importantly, we'll meet three times a week. Uh, this is such an important part of the course. Often learning the content is important, but really understanding it, really making sure you can connect the dots. That's where the discussions we have. And I think nothing beats live discussions um in terms of really understanding or or you might have understood something but your understanding is not quite right. Those are where the live interactions come in and we have loads of them three per week. Small groups and the forum is the ongoing platform where we can keep the conversation going, keep the discussions, look at code. Um, I will tend to I tend to post a few extra things as well on the forum from time to time. Maybe my perspective on a topic, etc., etc. Good. Um, I didn't want to keep going on for too long, so that's all I wanted to say, but if you have any questions, I'll go back to um there in case anyone wants to get that link again. If you have any questions, um, if you are on Zoom or on some of the platforms, you should be able to type your question and I'll see it on my screen. Some platforms don't send. So, if you've typed your message and it seems like I'm ignoring it, it's because it hasn't come to me. Um, some platforms don't allow you to send messages to me directly on this platform. I don't know why. Technology, you know, they they should learn more Python perhaps and do it better. Uh, I'm sure they have a reason for it. So if you've asked a question but I haven't seen it and feel free to contact me separately. Good. Um I think I have answered all the questions that have come in hopefully. Um on Zoom I've seen some private questions there. Uh yeah sorry I've seen a question there about time zones. I've mentioned this before but I'll mention it again. There are two sessions to choose from. Let me go back to uh not that page, this page. So there are two sessions to choose from. They're at different parts of the day. Now if you go to the page I've sent you, so real python.com/live and then go to python for beginners. When you scroll to the course curriculum or is it course syllabus, um you'll find the sessions there and that gives you the times in your time zone. So when you go to this page, uh unless you are like me based in the UK, you'll find the times in your time zone. You only need one of these times. So you will pick either group one or group two um when you if should you choose to join the course, we'll ask you which one do you want. So as long as one of these times works for you, then that's fine. A question I'm often asked is if I choose a certain time slot, is there absolutely no way I could go to the other one? Um we have everything about this course is about flexibility. So ideally if you can choose a time slot because then we'd like to know who is in which group but if on a certain day as I mentioned before you have a meeting in your normal slot and you can join the other one you're more than welcome to. So um so there is flexibility if you need to on a certain day join the other session it's okay but ideally you should pick one of those sessions and then focus on that. Um question from Kristen. Um will the more advanced course be presenting in the future? Uh so yes so we have currently we're running two different courses. This one is the Python for beginners and then we have an intermediate deep dive um which as the name says is for more intermediate levels. Um we are also running that uh in February. So both of them are running and both of them will keep running throughout the year. So the next batch is February 2nd. Both the the Python for beginners course, but also the intermediate starts on February the second. They're obviously they're separate courses, but they're running on the same days and times. Um but then they will run again uh throughout the year. So we'll keep running both beginners course, the Python for beginners and the intermediate deep dive on a rolling basis sort of with a few weeks gap in between and they'll start again. So if you're here thinking maybe I need the Python the intermediate course that is also running or if some people think I want to do the beginner's course and then maybe after a few months do the intermediate course they will be running um throughout the year. Absolutely good, good, good. Um, I think I have answered any questions I can see. So, what I'll do is I'll thank you all for joining. I'll finish off again on this page. So, all the information again a reminder.com/live. You'll find here you'll find a link for both the Python for beginners and the intermediate deep dive. But since we're talking about the beginners one, you click on Python for beginners there and you have all the information I've been showing you, dates, times, cost, how to book, if you want to book, and I'll finish with what I've said earlier again. If you still have questions, if either you're not sure whether this course is for you because of the level, maybe you're a beginner, but you're not quite a beginner, contact me. I'm happy to um carry on uh discussion and look at your particular needs. Um or if you think of a question that's didn't you didn't think of it now but the moment we stop the meeting you've thought of the question please do contact me I'm always happy to talk to you and help you find out whether the format and the content of the course are what you are looking for at this particular time. Good. Um what I'll do is I'll stay in the background for another minute or so in case someone is frantically typing a question and thinking no no don't stop the meeting. So, uh, I'll say goodbye to everyone, but if you have a question that you're typing in, please keep typing it. I'll stay on for another minute to make sure I've answered all of your questions. Thank you all for uh joining me in the session. And hopefully hopefully I'll see some of you in a few weeks time for the next Python for beginners course. Bye-bye. Enjoy the rest of your day.