# SSI Mentorship meeting Wednesday 10th May 2023

Have a separate function which generates the stimulus ordering, e.g.:

def generate_stimulus():
    ...
    return stimuli

Later on in your code:

def run_presentation():
    for stim in generate_stimuli():
        text.text = stim

## Saving stimulus data to a separate file

You can create plain text files very easily in Python, e.g.:

with open('stim.csv', 'wt') as f:
    f.write('"col1","col2","col3"\n')
    f.write('1,2,3\n')
    f.write('4,5,6\n')

# file will be automatically closed/saved when
# the with statement ends

You could save your per-trial stimuli like so:

stimuli = [
    ('green_circle',  'blue_triangle'),
    ('yellow_square', 'red_circle'),
] # list containing ordered stimuli

with open('stim.csv', 'wt') as f:
    for i, (stim1, stim2) in enumerate(stimuli):
        f.write(f'{stim1},{stim2}\n')

# Programming with Python

You might find these tutorials useful:

- Python programming tutorial with a realistic use-case https://swcarpentry.github.io/python-novice-inflammation/
- Using conda to manage separate Python environments and dependencies: https://docs.conda.io/en/latest/miniconda.html

You can create a separate conda environment for each separate project you are working on, with each environment only containing the dependencies that are needed. For example, you could create a separate conda environment with IPython, Jupyter Notebook, and JupyterLab with a command like this (the environment will be created in a sub-directory of the current directory called `my-env`):

conda create -c conda-forge -p ./my-env ipython notebook jupyterlab

Then you can _activate_ it (use it within your current terminal/powershell sesssion) by running `conda activate ./my-env`.

When using Python interactively, you can use a python interpreter from the terminal/powershell - just run `python` to start the interpreter.

There is also a third-party interpreter called `ipython` which is much nicer than the default interpreter.

You also have the option of using a slightly fancier interpreter called Jupyter Notebook, or JupyterLab. When you start either of these, a page will open in your web browser. You can write and execute code from within the web browser interface - behind the scenes, the code gets sent back to a Python session running within your termihal/powershell, and the results sent back to the browser. These Jupyter interfaces are super useful for learning and playing around.