Every page in this folder is one complete, working Python program, printed in full. Not a fragment, not a sketch — something you can type in, run, and hand to somebody. Reading whole programs written by other people is how programmers actually learn, and it is a skill the course expects you to build deliberately.
The routine is the same on every page:
- Read it and predict what it will do, in writing, before running anything. Predicting badly is useful; predicting nothing is not.
- Run it and grade your own prediction. Where you were wrong, find out why before moving on.
- Change it. Each page ends with two or three changes to make. The first is a single line; the last will take a period.
In reading order:
- Your First Python Program — counting chairs for a concert
- Talking to the User — a program that asks, converts, and answers
- Branching Programs — one decision, made the same way every time
- Looping Programs — a month of numbers becomes one sentence
- Working with Lists — a pile of marks becomes a short list of conversations
- Writing Functions — the same program, cut into three named pieces
- Reading and Writing Files — a program that still knows things tomorrow
Notice who each program is for. Not one of them is a puzzle: every single one was written because a person — a music teacher, a coach, a librarian, a club advisor — was doing something by hand that a computer could do better. That thread runs straight into The Community App, where the person is real, the problem is theirs, and the handover is the mark.
Need Python running first? Setting Up Python. Stuck on an error message? Reading an Error Message and Getting Unstuck.