How this will work

The worst part of learning Python is installing it on your computer, so we’re just going to totally skip that part! It’s a very very important piece of your journey in learning to code, buuuuuut it’s a real pain and I don’t want you to get bummed out early on.

Instead of running Python on your machine, we’ll run it right here on the web page. It should make things a little bit easier! It even works on a phone.

If you’d eventually like to install Python on your machine, I’ve released some fun software called Python Wrangler that will guide you through the steps. It’s especially helpful if you’ve tried and failed before, as it will help remove old, unwanted versions of Python.

In case it matters to you, we’re specifically using Python version 3, and not version 2, because it isn’t 2008 any more and come on please stop living in a terrible, dark, lonely past. Python 3 is also way better at international data and åçćëñtš and stuff, so if you live anywhere that isn’t the US (or can imagine getting on a plane some day) it’s going to be a much better deal.

By the way, I really really want to know what you think about this tutorial! Love letters, hate mail, ransom notes, and unidentified pieces of pottery can be sent to me at jonathan.soma@gmail.com, @dangerscarf, or /u/blunderbit.

I have a different version of this tutorial in the works, too, one that’s based on messing around with code instead of a step-by-step magic beautiful tutorial. It’s for anarchists, maybe? Different people learn differently, is all I know! Sign up for the mailing list to know when that one’s out.