OPS445 Prep

Learning outcomes

Once upon a time people read books in order to learn things. At one point a particular type of learning book became popular "XYZ for dummies", or "Learn XYZ in 21 days". It was the time when learning was particularly important to me, because I was at the beginning of choosing my career (which turned out to be programming and system administration) and I knew I had a lot to learn.

I read a number of such books, and despite my insecurities: it became apparent that:

• No useful skill can be mastered by a dummy.
• You're not going to actually learn a programming language in 21 days, unless you're already a programmer.

Times have changed. Books were replaced by the internet, and now it's hard to find anything on the internet that wasn't AI-generated. But the bullets above are still my position today. As a professional in the field who worked with many technologies and hundreds of people (including some unbelievable geniuses): I assure you that if this is your first course in programming: you will not be able to honestly call yourself a programmer by the end of it. That doesn't necessarily mean it's useless, it can be a good start on a decade-long self-development journey.

Here's what you can hope to get out this course:

• Understand that a computer is a tool, like a hammer. It's more complicated than a hammer, but it's a tool, and it will do whatever you can make it do.
• Hopefully start to distance yourself from the idea that a computer will do your thinking for you, despite how impressive you might think ChatGPT is.
• Learn how to get a computer to do what you want it to do, rather than you doing what the computer tells you to do.
• Become familiar with universal concepts understood and used by all programmers:
  • Values
  • Variables
  • References
  • Flow control statements (conditions, loops)
  • Functions
  • Data structures
  • Classes
  • Libraries
• Write simple programs in Python using those concepts.
• Maybe even read someone else's Python code.

Prerequisite skills

• Two ways to go through the course:
  • Easy way to get your mark
  • Hard way to learn something
• Prerequisite skills
  • none
• Delivery mode
• Workstation setup