6 081 Spring Semester 2007 Work for Week 1 1 MASSACHVSETTS INSTITVTE OF TECHNOLOGY Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 6 081 Introduction to EECS I Spring Semester 2007 Work for Week 1 This handout contains Software Lab for Tuesday February 6 Pre Lab exercises due Thursday February 8 at 2PM you should come and do them in lab on Wednesday February 7 This week Everyone should come and bring their laptop if they have one We ll have a software installation party Robot Lab for Thursday February 8 Post lab exercises due Tuesday February 13 at 2PM All pre and post lab exercises are to be handed in individually Please see the collaboration policy on the web site for more information Getting started Schedule In general the weekly schedule for 6 081 will be like this Tuesday lecture from 2 3 30 followed by a software lab from 3 30 5 00 We will also hand out the homework for the coming week The homework will include a part that is due on Thursday before lab and a part that is due the following Tuesday before lecture The homework will have parts to write up and turn in as well as parts to be done with the online tutor Wednesday evening homework help session from 6 10 Attendance at these sessions is strongly recommended You are welcome to do the homework for Thursday on your own if you prefer or in a self organized study group But we suggest that your time will be much better spent if you do your pre lab homework in the staffed Wednesday sessions When programming especially it s easy to get lost in rat holes and spend enormous amounts of time digging yourself out Doing your work when there are staff members around can make things much easier Thursday afternoon lab Each lab will end with a short quiz based on the pre lab assignment as well as the material covered during the lab Post lab homework due before the following Tuesday lecture Reading This is such a cool new way of looking at the material of intro EECS there is no textbook We will be producing draft notes each week and those will be your primary reading resource In addition for Python we recommend finding a basic language reference that you like and also reading How to Think Like a Computer Scientist Official Python tutorial http http docs python org tut tut html 6 081 Spring Semester 2007 Work for Week 1 2 How to Think Like a Computer Scientist Learning with Python by Allen Downey Jeffrey Elkner Chris Meyers This book assumes no programming experience It is not a Python reference manual it is a computer science text that uses Python as an example Highly recommended http www greenteapress com thinkpython thinkCSpy pdf Learning Python by David Ascher and Mark Lutz This book also assumes very little no programming experience and is longer not so great for learning Python in a hurry but covers topics in great detail so is good as a reference guide if you know what you re looking for http proquest safaribooksonline com libproxy mit edu 0596002815 tocview true You need an MIT Certificate to view this one Learn Python in 10 Minutes by Poromenos If you have very little time and a fair bit of programming experience in another language this tutorial covers Python s syntax quickly http www poromenos org tutorials python Look at some of the other reference material on the class web site under Resource Material under the General Information menu at the top of the web page 1 Software Lab Starting and using IDLE IDLE is a simple way to edit and run Python programs To start it on one of the lab laptops go to a shell and type idle python2 4 Python Shell The Python shell acts a little bit like a calculator You type in expressions Python evaluates them and then prints the result So if you type 4 4 It will print out 8 Play with the shell a little bit Edit a file You ll want to use the shell to test things out but not to write your programs If you want to start defining procedures you should open a new file choose New Window from the File menu and write your definitions in there So start by making a file containing this definition a hi b 7 def f x return x 1 Now choose Run Module from IDLE s Run menu It will act as if you have typed the text of your file into the shell If there was something obviously syntactically wrong with your file parentheses not closed for example IDLE will tell you about it and highlight the point in your file where the problem is Otherwise the shell will print out something like 1 If you use Windows with Internet Explorer as your web browser you won t see the drop down menu under General Information There s a Resource Material link at the bottom of the home page that you can follow instead 6 081 Spring Semester 2007 Work for Week 1 3 RESTART And now you can ask it to evaluate expressions including things you ve defined in your file Question 1 Use the Python shell to compute f f f b Question 2 What happens if you do f a To do the following exercises use the shell for experimentation and write new procedure definitions in your file Whenever you change your file you ll need to do Run Module again Archive your file When you do work on a lab laptop you should always remember to mail or FTP your files back to yourselves We don t guarantee that you ll always get the same laptop or that any files that you leave on it will remain there from week to week An easy way to keep your files safe is to use a webmail service You may have a service such as Gmail or Hotmail before We ll explain the process using MIT webmail To use MIT webmail first you go to http webmail mit edu To log in type your Athena account user name and its password You can compose an email to your email address user mit edu where user is your account name and attach your files Another way to protect your files is to copy the files from a lab laptop to your Athena account You can do this by using the scp command General usage of scp when copying the file to the remote computer is as follows file user machine file For example if you want to copy the file lab1 py to the directory Courses 6 081 on your Athena account user1 you type scp lab1 py user1 athena dialup mit edu Courses 6 081 lab1 py Note that the directory specified in the destination Courses 6 081 must have been created before copying a file into it Also note that scp command automatically overwrites the file you specified as the destination without asking your permission So you have to be careful not to overwrite your important …
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