Chapter 1
Python Outside the Browser
Welcome to the Course
Hi, I’m Erik. I write and maintain this course, along with the rest of Python Land. You are here because you can already write Python that works, and you want it to run somewhere other than a browser tab.
That gap is wider than it looks, and it is where most self-taught programmers get stuck. Not because the Python gets harder, but because everything around it is suddenly your responsibility: where Python lives on your machine, which version is running, where your files are, what to type to start the thing.
What this course needs from you
You need Python Fundamentals I or equivalent experience, plus a computer where you can practice typing
If you would rather build that foundation properly first, Computer Fundamentals teaches it from the beginning, along with files, paths, and how to read an error message. It is not a prerequisite. It is there if the terminal is the part that worries you.
How this course works
You can open any lesson, but follow the recommended order when learning these tools for the first time. You first rehearse in the site’s terminal and project editor, then take projects onto your own computer. Work accumulates within a chapter; later chapters start from supplied project snapshots so everyone has the files that chapter needs.
There is no prize for rushing. If something does not make sense the first time, that is normal. Setting up a working environment is the part of programming that everyone finds fiddly, and it gets much easier once you have done it once with someone explaining what each step is for.
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, and a quick re-read of an earlier lesson is time well spent. The doing, though, needs the computer you want to end up with, since the whole point of this course is that the project lives on your machine rather than on this page.
Meet Monty
Monty is Python Land’s learning guide, and you will find it beside every lesson. Ask what an error means, ask for a second explanation, or ask for a hint that gets you moving again without handing you the answer. Error messages from a real machine are wordier than the ones you saw in the browser, and translating them is something Monty is good at.
Monty is included free throughout this first chapter. Open it now and ask:
Why does it matter which Python is running when I type a command?
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 evening when something on your machine behaves differently from the lesson and you want a second pair of eyes.
Things will go wrong, and that is the curriculum
On your own computer, a command will fail because of a path, a version, or a permission. That is not you doing the course badly. It is the course, because reading that failure and identifying the failing layer is one of the skills you are here to build.
Every exercise works inside a project folder you create and can delete. Nothing here asks you to touch anything your system depends on.
When you are ready, press Mark complete and we will start with what is actually running your code.