Some skills in this course are not concepts and not tasks — they are ways of working: getting Python running, reading an error without flinching, asking a real person what they actually need. Each tutorial below teaches one of those once, so every other page can link here instead of explaining it again.
| Tutorial | The skill |
|---|---|
| Using This Site | Finding your way around this site quickly |
| Setting Up Python | Running Python in class and at home |
| Reading an Error Message | Turning a traceback into a diagnosis |
| Using the Debugger | Watching a program run, one line at a time |
| Writing Code Others Can Read | Code a stranger can pick up |
| Interviewing Your Client | Asking well, and asking permission |
| Getting Unstuck | Being stuck well instead of spinning |
| Organizing Your Files | Folders and names you can still use in January |
| Backing Up Your Work | Three copies, and one of them elsewhere |
| Starting from a Skeleton | Beginning from a shape instead of a blank file |
| Reading the Documentation | Finding out what a function actually does |
| Ways to Find a Bug | Five methods, in the order to try them |
| Writing a Test Plan | Deciding what “working” means before you run it |
| Keeping a Project Board | Knowing what is finished, and what is stuck |
Skim them all early and come back to each when it turns urgent. The error-message pair earns its keep the first time a program crashes, which will be soon and is completely normal. And do not leave Interviewing Your Client until the culminating project starts — the habits in it are worth practising on small things first.