A Turtle Tale • Learn Python In A Visual Way

A Python beginners' course with a difference. It's entirely visual.

What you'll learn

Understand the fundamentals of writing a Python computer program

Understand the mindset needed for communicating with a computer through a program

Learn key foundational topics, including loops, defining functions, conditional statements

Gain confidence to write programs independently

Requirements

No prior knowledge of programming is required.

Description

This course introduces the fundamentals of programming through graphics-based projects using Python's built-in `turtle` module. This is a fun way of learning the basics and you'll also be able to apply your newly-acquired knowledge to other non-graphics programs.A Turtle Tale starts from the basics and introduces all the key topics that are central to programming and Python. All the projects are graphics-based, including creating animations and some games, too. However, the key Python topics you'll learn are universal.I've been teaching Python for a decade and I believe in clear communication and in making sure students understand why things happen the way they do, and not just how to get things done. My teaching style is different. Try out the first few lessons and if it's your style, then we'll be together for a many hours.No prior experience of Python or coding is required. This is a beginner's course.Or perhaps you're not a beginner, but you've done a bit of coding in the past but didn't carry on. It wasn't you, it's likely you didn't find the resources that speak directly to you. I can't promise my style is what you're looking for, but you'll know after the first few lessons!In this course you'll learn:How to apply the key principles and mindset for communicating with a computer through programmingHow to repeat blocks of code using `for` loops and `while` loopsHow to store data using variables and using various data typesHow to define your own functions to re-use codeHow to use data structures including lists, dictionaries, and tuplesHow to apply best practices when codingThis course will teach you all the fundamental tools, of course, but more importantly, it will teach you the right mindset for programming. This is just as important as learning all the programming techniques—if not more important.

Overview

Section 1: The Story of Fred and Mary • Programming Basics

Lecture 1 Welcome to the coding • What's different in this course?

Lecture 2 About a Turtle Tale

Lecture 3 Installing Python and Other Tools

Lecture 4 First Words and `turtle`

Lecture 5 Finding Out What A Turtle Can Do

Lecture 6 Different Types of Objects in a Python Program

Lecture 7 Introducing Fred and Mary

Lecture 8 Fred and Mary Go On and On • `while` Loop

Lecture 9 Where's Fred? • Using `print()`

Lecture 10 Asking The Program To Make a Decision • `if` statements

Lecture 11 Different Types of Objects (Again) • Data Types

Lecture 12 Equals Equals Is Not The Same As Equals

Lecture 13 Stopping Fred and Mary • Stopping The `while` Loop

Lecture 14 Stopping When Mary Reaches The End Too

Lecture 15 Your First Bug

Lecture 16 Squashing Your First Bug

Lecture 17 Reviewing Fred and Mary

Lecture 18 Extra: Other ways of stopping the `while` loop

Lecture 19 Extra: Changing The Font in `fred.write()`

Lecture 20 Exercises

Section 2: Animating Python • Lists and More Loops

Lecture 21 The Tale So Far

Lecture 22 The Starry Night

Lecture 23 Creating One Star

Lecture 24 Creating Many Stars • The `for` Loop

Lecture 25 More Objects • The Screen

Lecture 26 Controlling When Things Are Displayed On The Screen

Lecture 27 Finishing The Starry Night

Lecture 28 Meet Monty (Introduction to the central analogy in A Turtle Tale)

Lecture 29 Monty And Modules

Lecture 30 When You Have A List Of Things To Store • Python's Lists

Lecture 31 Many Angry Turtles Screensaver • Getting Started

Lecture 32 Many Angry Turtles Screensaver • Setting Up Many Turtles

Lecture 33 Many Angry Turtles Screensaver • Looping Through A List

Lecture 34 Many Angry Turtles Screensaver • Finishing Touches

Lecture 35 More On Lists • Indexing and Slicing

Lecture 36 More On Lists • List Methods

Lecture 37 Exercises

Section 3: Bouncing Ball and Bouncing Balls

Lecture 38 The Bouncing Tennis Ball

Lecture 39 Another Way of Moving A Turtle

Lecture 40 Dropping The Ball And Gravity

Lecture 41 Bouncing Off The Ground

Lecture 42 Losing A Bit Of Energy Each Time The Ball Bounces

Lecture 43 Fixing The Disappearing Ball Bug

Lecture 44 A Side Note: f-strings

Lecture 45 Tossing The Ball Sideways (And Some Refactoring)

Lecture 46 Dealing With The Walls

Lecture 47 From One Ball To Many Balls

Lecture 48 [Advanced Topic] Giving Each Ball Its Own Velocity

Section 4: The Bubble Chase Game • Defining Functions

Lecture 49 Introducing Functions and The Bubble Chase Game

Lecture 50 You've Used Many Functions Already

Lecture 51 Let's Start

Lecture 52 Planning the Game and Moving The Player Forward

Lecture 53 Defining A Function

Lecture 54 Binding A Function To A Key On The Keyboard

Lecture 55 Parentheses

Lecture 56 Teleporting The Player

Lecture 57 Teleporting The Player Using A Function

Lecture 58 Running The Program in Slow Motion

Lecture 59 Creating A Bubble

Lecture 60 Bursting The Bubbles

Lecture 61 Adding A Timer

Lecture 62 Stopping The Game

Lecture 63 Controlling When The Game Starts

Lecture 64 Running The Game Three Times In A Row

Lecture 65 Local Variables In Functions

Lecture 66 Finishing The Game, Finally!

Lecture 67 Exercises

Section 5: Extra Section: Many Moving Bubbles in The Bubble Chase Game

Lecture 68 Let's Discuss The Updates To The Game

Lecture 69 Many Bubbles

Lecture 70 Many Moving Bubbles

Section 6: The Marching Turtles • More Data Structures • Dictionaries

Lecture 71 A Quick Introduction To This Chapter

Lecture 72 Some Data Type Categories • Iterables and Sequences

Lecture 73 Some Data Type Categories • Mutable and Immutable

Lecture 74 Some Other Data Structures • Tuples

Lecture 75 Some Other Data Structures • Dictionaries

Lecture 76 The Red, Green, And Blue Turtle Groups

Lecture 77 Performing An Action When The User Clicks On The Screen

Lecture 78 Clicking On A Turtle

Lecture 79 Grouping The Groups

Lecture 80 Selecting Groups of Turtles

Lecture 81 Disabling The Clicks

Lecture 82 Moving The Red Group of Turtles

Lecture 83 Concluding The Animation

Lecture 84 This Tale Ends Here, But There Are Many More To Come

Lecture 85 Extra lesson: One Very Last Update To The Marching Turtles Animation

Beginners starting to learn to code using Python or those who have tried to learn in the past but gave up!