Chapter 1
What Is a Computer?
Welcome to the Course
Hi, I’m Erik. I write and maintain this course, along with the rest of Python Land. I built it for people who use a computer every day and have never been shown what is actually happening inside it.
You do not need a technical background. If you can open a browser and save a file, you can start here. Nothing assumes you want to become a programmer either. Understanding your own machine is worth something on its own, and it happens to remove most of the confusion that makes programming harder than it needs to be later.
What you will need
The early chapters are reading and thinking, so you can do them anywhere. From the
How this course works
The lessons are meant to be followed in order, and each one adds a piece to the same picture. They are not locked, so you can look ahead or go back whenever you want. Some are mostly explanation. Others ask you to run a command and read what comes back.
There is no prize for rushing. If something does not make sense the first time, that is normal. Most of this becomes clear once you have met the same idea from two directions.
This site should work fairly well on a small screen, like your mobile phone. Try it; you can read a lesson or two while waiting for something or someone. Learning takes plenty of repetition, so a quick re-read of an earlier lesson is time well spent. The command-line practice goes better with a real keyboard, so save those parts for when you are at your computer.
Meet Monty
Monty is Python Land’s learning guide, and you will find it beside every lesson. You can ask for another explanation of an idea that did not land, ask what an error message means, or ask for a hint that gets you moving again without handing you the answer.
Monty is included free throughout this first chapter. Open it now and ask:
What is the difference between
and software?
Ask a follow-up if part of the answer is unclear. Monty knows which lesson you are reading, so you do not need to explain the situation from the start.
After Chapter 1, full Monty support is part of the Guided subscription. The course is written to stand on its own without it. Guided is there for the moments when a second explanation, or someone to read your error message with you, would save you an evening.
Mistakes are welcome here
Later in this course you will type commands that change real files on your own computer. That sounds riskier than it is, because every exercise works inside a practice folder you create for the purpose and can delete afterward. You will also learn how to check what a command is about to do before you run it, which is the habit that keeps the rest of your files safe.
An error message is not a failure. It is the computer telling you, in its own compressed way, that it could not carry out an instruction as written. Reading those messages is a skill this course teaches directly, and Monty can translate one into plain English whenever you want.
When you are ready, press Mark complete and we will start with what a computer actually does.