Do I need prior experience?

No — Python From a White Sheet starts from the fundamentals and is suitable for beginners.

How long does Python From a White Sheet take?

Python From a White Sheet includes 4 modules and 12 lessons. You learn at your own pace.

Python From a White Sheet is part of the free pool — create a free account and add it to your collection.

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Python From a White Sheet

The exact sequence nine students have already walked, from a blank file to a program that asks questions, checks the answers and refuses bad input. No prior programming. No maths. You will break it repeatedly, on purpose.

trending_upBeginner
schedule5h 43m
menu_book12 lessons
publicEnglish
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Briefing

Most beginner courses show you working code and ask you to admire it. This one plants the bug and lets it fire. You will write one program across four modules. It starts as a single `print` line and finishes as something that asks a question, cleans up whatever the person typed, decides what to do with it, does arithmetic on it, rejects nonsense and loops until it is satisfied. Every failure you meet on the way is one a real student hit first: the trailing space, the capital letter, the missing colon, the result you forgot to store, the number that was secretly a piece of text. By the end you will not have memorised Python. You will be able to find out why something does not work, which is the actual job.

Course outline · 4 modules

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01 First Contact
3 lessons·1h 13m

Nothing here is conceptual. You type, you run, you read what the computer says back. The only skill being trained in this module is reading an error message instead of panicking at it.
02 Functions and Decisions
3 lessons·1h 27m

Two rules arrive in this module and they hold for the rest of your life in Python. All definitions above, all calls at the bottom. And indentation is imaginary brackets — the computer decides what…
03 Cleaning What People Type
3 lessons·1h 8m

Dirty dishes go in the sink before the cupboard. Nothing a person typed goes into your logic until it has been through clean().
04 Numbers, Validation and Loops
3 lessons·1h 55m

Garbage in, garbage out. input() always hands you text, even when it looks like a number, and the program that trusts it is the program that crashes in front of someone.

Frequently asked

What will I learn in Python From a White Sheet?: The exact sequence nine students have already walked, from a blank file to a program that asks questions, checks the answers and refuses bad input. No prior programming. No maths. You will break it repeatedly, on purpose.
Do I need prior experience?: No — Python From a White Sheet starts from the fundamentals and is suitable for beginners.
How long does Python From a White Sheet take?: Python From a White Sheet includes 4 modules and 12 lessons. You learn at your own pace.
How do I get access?: Python From a White Sheet is part of the free pool — create a free account and add it to your collection.

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