For the latter part of this course, we will be building more complex programs than can't be written in Python Notebooks. For this reason, you will need to have a Python interpreter and a source-code editor installed on your computer. Fortunately, both of these things are available for free and can be installed relatively easily.
For this course, we recommend using the Python interpreter available from python.org and Visual Studio Code as a source-code editor. However, if you have gotten a Python interpreter from somewhere else, or a have different source-code editor you prefer, you can use them if you wish. We encourage you to do whatever you are comfortable with.
These instructions describe generally what needs to be done to install Python and Visual Studio Code. In most cases, we expect them to work as is, but it always possible that there is something particular about your computer that causes them not to work properly. If you have any problems you can post a comment below or talk to your tutor during your lab.
Download Python 3.9.7 from python.org . If you hover over the 'Download' button in the menu, it should give you a button to download the right version of Python for your operating system.
Once the download has finished, double click the file to install Python. Follow the prompts to install the software, but make sure to:
Download Visual Studio Code from its website. The main button on the page should download the right version for your computer.
Once downloaded, install it. Make sure the following boxes are ticked during installation.
Download a file containing all the course material so far from here. It's a zip file containing a folder called cs1010-21t3-main . Copy or extract this folder to wherever you keep your coursework.
Right click on the folder itself and click "Open with Code". It's important to do it this way as Visual Studio Code needs to be aware of the entire contents of the folder.
Click on resources-and-references -> python-setup and setup.ipynb on the left-hand section of the window. You will be asked to install the recommended extensions. Click Install and wait until a tab titled Python - Getting Started opens. This may take a little while.
Close all open tabs and go back to the Explorer view by clicking View in the top menu then Explorer . Click on setup.ipynb again and click Trust all notebooks . Tick the box below Jupyter: Always Trust Notebooks .
Close all open tabs and click on setup.ipynb again . This opens it as a trusted notebook. Follow the instructions in the notebook itself to finish the installation.