Lecture 1

Lecture 1, Tue 01/09

Introduction

Recorded Lecture: 1_9_24

Logistics

Course webpage: https://ucsb-csw8.github.io/w24/
- Please read and understand the syllabus: https://ucsb-csw8.github.io/w24/info/syllabus/
Sign up for Piazza (invite should be sent to all enrolled students)
Purchase our version of zyBooks
- (see Piazza Welcome! Useful Links and Purchasing ZyBooks note)
Sign up for Gradescope (invite should be sent to all enrolled students)
Let us know if you encounter any issues or have questions

It’s good to have Python3 installed on your computer (and you’ll need it later in this quarter)
- https://www.python.org/downloads/
IDLE comes with Python and is used to execute code and display your output
The Interactive Shell is good for observing output and executing simple instructions
- But we don’t write Python code in the interactive shell
- If you close IDLE or turn off your computer, the interactive shell won’t remember what you wrote
- So we want to create a new Python file (.py) in your file system that contains your code.
  - File -> New File
  - Save As... -> (somewhere on your file system)
- You can execute your file with Run -> Run Module, and the interactive shell will display your output
- Note that you don’t need this to do your zyBooks work
If you have any questions about installing / running Python, we’ll be happy to help in lab sections / office hours!

In Python, we can separate English text (“comments”) from source code by:
- Preceding a single line with a # sign
- Enclosing multiple lines with ''' or """
Example

# This is a single line comment.

'''
This is
a multi-line
comment
'''

"""
This works
too
"""

PROCESSOR: Does computations
MEMORY/STORAGE: Contain information to act on or instructions to execute
SOFTWARE: is the instructions that the processor follows
ALGORITHM is a step-by-step procedure to do something
- A chef’s recipe is an algorithm
- We will use Python to construct algorithms to tell our computer to solve various problems