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Microsoft Programming Python

Microsoft Launches Free Python Programming Video Series On YouTube (zdnet.com) 63

An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: Microsoft has launched a new 44-part series called Python for Beginners on YouTube, consisting of three- to four-minute lessons from two self-described geeks at Microsoft who love programming and teaching.

The course isn't quite for total beginners as it assumes people have done a little programming in JavaScript or played around with the MIT-developed Scratch visual programming language aimed at kids. But it could help beginners kick-start ambitions to build machine-learning apps, web applications, or automate processes on a desktop.... It has published a page on GitHub containing additional resources, including slides and code samples to help students become better at Python.

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Microsoft Launches Free Python Programming Video Series On YouTube

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  • All I had time for today was a quick look. With that, it looks good. However, I do not claim to be a youtube expert. Is there a way to implement a teacher dashboard on YouTube in order to track student progress?
  • Hell, even Haskell monads already have too many tutorials.

    • Actually, I think that continued Haskell development is one of the best things to come out of Microsoft.

      SPJ is doing great work, and they're letting him do what needs to be done.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Teaching Python is not Microsoft's main interest here.

      They probably want to push Visual Studio Code for Python development.

      • by geek ( 5680 )

        Teaching Python is not Microsoft's main interest here.

        They probably want to push Visual Studio Code for Python development.

        They are also adding Python as a supported scripting language in Excel

        • Hey, anything that lets people finally dump the abomination that is VB (and JS, for that matter) is good in my books.

      • by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        I don't expect Microsoft to be altruistic so I don't care. The course is free. If you don't want to use VSC, you're free to do so... So this is a net gain for humanity.

        That aside, despite the fact that I am a total noob coder and probably don't get to have an opinion, I think there are worse MS products out there than VSC.

      • by ssyladin ( 458003 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @08:29AM (#59252268)

        Yup - lets push that 100% free and Open Source editor [github.com] so they can ... profit?.

        • No, no. You don't see the 4D chess MS is playing. They will give you the free version now, sure, but in a year or two they will literally end python completely. Don't ask about the steps in between, it's M$haft, after all! /s
      • I think its accepting that python scripting is becoming the "defacto standard" for a large number of previously disparate cliques.

        I dont like it any more than you do.
    • I'm of the mind that the more quality, freely available teaching information on any subject, programming included, the better. I could imagine this being of help to high school and college kids learning to program if they need something to supplement what their teacher has said.
      • by Junta ( 36770 )

        Eh, there's a cost.

        For example, Google has my child's school all in on Google Classroom and that at face value is great for the school. It has the not-so-coindicental side effect of the kids normalizing "give all my data and money to google and let them take care of it".

        In another context, I was dealing with a company that had undergone training to modernize their infrastructure with docker and was asking all their software vendors to provide a Dockerfile for all the software they want. Without further bac

  • Youtube? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @07:25AM (#59252132)
    Videos have to be the most inefficient, worst way to learn most academic topics. I don't have the time or interest to sit through a video to learn something that I could learn in a fraction of the time with some simple text.
    • Re:Youtube? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mbourgon ( 186257 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @08:25AM (#59252252) Homepage

      Halfway through the first video, "if you'd prefer to do text based modules..." and mention that they're available, presumably at the link in the vid.

    • I don't have the time or interest to sit through a video to learn something that I could learn in a fraction of the time with some simple text.

      Why hello, Mr. Johnson! [samueljohnson.com] :)

    • Re:Youtube? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by godrik ( 1287354 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @09:49AM (#59252502)

      While I agree with you that videos are a terrible way to learn, video tutorials are extremely popular with students.

      • And I honestly don't understand why. Not only is it usually non-trivial to figure out quickly whether the video even covers what you're trying to learn (not to mention that even if you know, it's fairly hard to scroll quickly to the part that actually interests you), how do you copy/paste the code snippets that you need and don't understand well enough to actually recreate them?

        If new programmers can't do that anymore, security might become some sort of work where you actually have to do some work!

        • by Jack9 ( 11421 )

          > And I honestly don't understand why

          Ask yourself why students bother recording lectures? It's not a deep analysis.

          Having a tutorial, which is replayable at any time in any measure, has utility. You don't need to keep a book with you or notes or remember every detail. It's also comforting (and confidence inspiring) to see how action translates into result in a short time.

      • by andi75 ( 84413 )

        Depends on the video. I teach integration by parts simply by showing this video (in german, use subtitles if required):

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        and following up with some exercises. I have yet to see a student who didn't get it after seeing the video twice (and they all remember the formula, because the song is really catchy!).

      • I suppose it depends on the student. I know that _this_ student can't stand video based instruction.

        I'm a fast reader with a limited amount of time available and speech is one of the slowest ways to transmit information. Please just give me the text to read!

    • Some people learn differently.
  • Hopefully this will set better examples than the multi-part series by a guy who thinks that running X windows as root is a good idea.

  • The world would be a better place if they instead taught Typescript. It is a much better language, though not as broad of a selection of packages. But it gives an immediate entry into web programming, which is much more accessible to newbs than machine learning.
  • The Ministry of Silly Programming Languages, of course.

  • One problem with stories like this is that the programming load is not directly questioned: custom writing company [customwritingcompany.com].

The unfacts, did we have them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude.

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