Prelab 1 Due: Beginning of lab on 2020-02-14

This is a short assignment to make sure everything is set up for our first lab.

Set up your development environment

You will need a computer for working on assignments for this course. You can use your own or borrow a laptop from the library.

Whether working on your own computer or a loaner laptop, you will need to install Thonny, available for free from https://thonny.org. If you have problems and/or would like additional help, the department ASIs (Assistants in Instruction) Catherine Miller and Robert Lichenstein can assist you.

Start up Thonny.

The Thonny screen will be divided into 2 regions:

1. The top half is the editor; this is where you will be typing in your Python programs.
2. The bottom half is the shell (or console), where you can interact with the Python interpreter.

Thonny has a number of other windows that aren’t shown by default that we will use later in the semester. Don’t hesitate to explore!

Course Administration

Review the course web page concerning class policies.

Questions

Please answer the following questions on Gradescope by the due date at the top of the page:

1. Execute the following two Python statements in the Thonny Shell and enter the string that is printed out (as the name suggests, this code prints the version of Python used by Thonny).

    import platform
    print(platform.python_version())
   

2. Tell me a bit about yourself and your interests. What brings you to take this course?

Prepare for lab

Read through the Lab 1 assignment.

Right-click on this link for the starter file, select “Save as…”, and save the file as “lab1_functions.py” in a folder you have created for the class.