By Zed A. Shaw

My Python A Starts Tomorrow: With Video

This is a quick announcement that I'm doing another Python course based on my book Learn Python The Hard Way over at Codelesson.com.

The class starts tomorrow so signup for it if you want to get in. It will probably be small, at about 12 students this time around.

Improvements To The Course

The course covers the very first half of the book, exercises 0-24, and lasts 4 weeks. This will be the second time I've taught the class and I'm making the following improvements:

  1. Short Videos Showing You Exercises There wasn't a lot of interaction with the students last time because the book is the kind of that leads you through learning to program a little bit at a time. Pretty much you type in each lesson and you learn to code. I was mostly just answering questions. This time though, I'm going to do a whole bunch of lightning fast 3-10 minute videos showing how to do exercises, or extra credit. The purpose of the videos is to show you how it's done, but to not drone on since you really should be coding and not watching videos.

  2. Required Forum Posts In the last round of Python A people just wen through the book and emailed me. Since the course is online it's difficult to actually know that there's even other students. I'm going to require that students participate in one forum thread a week that I'll start. I'm also going to encourage students to post to the forum when they get stuck, since usually right after they write their problem they realize the solution.

  3. Meet Up In San Francisco I already know one person taking the class, so I'm going to try to have at least 2 meetings during the course with students. I know many students won't be in San Francisco, but if you are and want to take the class, then this is a chance to get hands-on help from me. It'll also be fun. Kind of like a little hacking session.

  4. Better Graded Feedback I also tended to slack on the grading in the last course since most folks did the work and there's not much to it. This time around I'll be more rigorous on the grading and will use common code problems students have to feed short videos later in the course.

That's all there is to it. If you have about 1 hour a night for the next month and want to learn to code, then signup.