Syllabus 20090929

[[.. | Syllabus]]: Tuesday, September 29

Group Meeting

• Introduction to the Technical Course
• Overview of the trimester
• Command-line introduction (Labs)

Introduction to the Technical Course

Why Programming?

• Femke Snelting: Future Tools
• Matthew Fuller: Softness: Interrogability ...

Why Python?

• Computer Languages History
• File:Syllabus 20090929 http: vis.cs.ucdavis.edu ~ogawa codeswarm python-300px.png

Python Commit visualisation

Structure of the course

• Group Meetings
• Labs
• Exercises & assignments
• Wiki (you are looking at it ;)
• ThinkPython -- the textbook

Overview of the Trimester

• Components of Computation:
• Text commands
• Doing things in steps / pipeline
• Repetition (Loops)
• Reptition with Change (Variables & Loops)
• Conditions & Interaction
• State Machines

Lab

• A metaphoric introduction to the command-line via the classic game "Adventure"
• Working with images from the command-line using ImageMagick

Other resources

• FlossManuals/OLPC Terminal introduction