Now we began learning Python.

First, we'll start learning

a little bit about Spyder, the integrated development
environment that we're using. To start it, click on Start and go to this search
window and
type S-P-Y-D-E-R and you'll see Spyder, you can execute it. You can go to the
spotlight on
Macintosh and do the same thing. It'll take just a moment to load. And when it does
load,
you'll notice that it has several panes. Here's an editor pane. Here is the iPython
console pane. This is were programs will be executed. And then there's a pane up
here
that has three different tabs. This is object inspector,
this is a variable explorer, and this is a file explorer. For the time being,
we'll only talk about file explorer. Up at the top you'll see the current
working directory Now on my machine, using users, Bill as my name,
document, PythonCoursera. If I go down here and type ls, this is a Unix command
that works
in IPython or PC and a Macintosh. It'll show that the current working
director is the one shown up here. But I want to go to lesson one. So I'm going to
click on that and now if I go down here and type LS,
we're still in this directory. So I want to set this one as
the current work directory. So I'm going to click right there. Now when I type LS,
I've got the lesson one directory and
there's a list of programs in it. They're the same as up here
exercise one with lecture P1. Okay, now over here Spyder will always
start out with a temporary file. I'm not interested in that file. If I get rid of
it,
it just keeps coming back, so I want to go over here and
use my first program, start Python, then I'm going to click that away and
I'm not going to [INAUDIBLE] Save it. Now the name of this
file is startpython.py. Most Python programs will end in dot py. And I'll put the
name of it right
here after this pound sign so that I can keep track of the name of
the file as it's stored on the disk. And notice several things about this. There's
a line going across every now and
then. Anything between the two
lines is called a cell. This is an IPython feature. We can execute anything in one
of these
cells without executing the whole file. Now to make cell, we type pound,
percent, sand and pound, percent, sand. Everything between these two is a cell. Now
let's go over here and
execute this first function. Write down function. I'm going to execute it by
clicking
anywhere inside this cell and I'm going to type control enter. PC our type
Ctrl+Enter, but
on a Macintosh I would type Cmd+Return, they're equivalent. Now that loaded
everything in this cell into our iPython console,
from where I can run it. And I run it by typing
the name of the function. This function is a simple one. It just prints hello
world. This is traditional in programming to have
a simple program like this to begin with. Let's analyze the way this looks. We've
got define function, got the name
of the function we're defining, hello. And the line always ends in colon. Now, and
a function always
has a pair of parentheses. Later on we'll be putting arguments
inside of these parentheses. Then we have four spaces, and then the Python command
print. And the phrase to print in quotes,
hello world. Everything that's indented
under this function name will be part of the function. So once we get it over
here in the Console, we can run it as often as we want. Here's another function.
It's practically the same thing. Define, and we'll give it a new name. And we're
going to print
a different phrase. Again, we're going to have to go
over here and type it, now watch. If I'm not careful and I start typing,
I'm typing in the editor. And the editor window indicates
that we typed into it by typing a asterisk that means
the file needs to be saved. But I don't want to save it so I'm
going to type Control+Z and that'll remove this typing that I've done and
on Macintosh it would be Cmd Z. I've gotta be careful
that I go over here and execute this thing from
the iPython console. Notice the tab up here
says iPython console Now, if we type one of these
functions without loading it into iPython, it's just not known. So I've gotta go
over here and
type Ctrl+Enter or Cmd Return click down here and type outschool you got to
type it right of course. Type up arrow and will repeat the last
command and I can change it our school, this course here is actually good. Now, I
want to warn you about various
things that can go wrong fairly early so that you can fix them
in case you get there. One thing is that you can write
programs that won't ever stop. This one, called it forever
because it will run forever. This is a while loop. While is true is true and it's
always true, we're going to
do nothing, we're going to pass. That's a simple loop. We'll talk about more about
that later. And I'm going to load that loop in and
I'm going to run it. Now, This function is running and
running and running and I don't have any control on what's going
on anymore and I need to when to stop it. The way to stop this is typing Ctrl C,
holding the control key then pressing c. And you'll get a keyboard interrupt. Now
the Macintosh, you type
exactly the same thing, control c. Now, there's a possibility that you write
a program that even that won't work. Let's bring this one up again. It will work on
this one right. We're going to have
another way to stop this. And another way to stop this is to
make this console window go away we're going to click this close tab and
it's gone. Now we'll need a new console
window in order to keep going. And we go Console menu, and
we Open an IPython console. Now we don't open a Python console, in this course
we're only using IPython
consoles because they're nicer. They have features that we need for this course
that you would
be using in data analysis. You may as well use the IPython console
rather than writing extra code okay. Click on that it's connected to
a kernel a kernel is a running copy of Python and now we have an IPython console.
We don't have, however,
are functions that we'd enter. We've got to execute them again,
control enter, and load them in. And I'm messing up. All right, I'll type over
here, Hello. And now we're back with
a good copy of Python, with a good copy of iPython
console without any problems. So what we did was we clicked
here to close the tab, clicked over here on console, open an app right on console
and
then we've got a new one.