Arrived at the The Playhouse to find ourselves in the middle of a Minecraft tournament, and Camilla (Honeycomb Creative Works), showed us the room we were to set up and run the workshop in.

I introduced what Coding Grace is about and who Grace actually is.

You won't be able to see the video in the slides, here it is if you and anyone is curious about her explanation of the nanosecond:

I also recommend this longer video of Grace Hopper on the Letterman show (this wasn't shown at the workshop):

After the introduction, aside from one or two re-installations of Python, people installed Sublime Text Editor, and got their copy of the workshop content.

We got stuck in going through the Python scripts introducing

• what a Python script it and how to execute it

  • For those using Windows, unless you have it set up in your environment (we didn't cover this in the workshop), you will need to type the full path (where the application can be found on the system), e.g.

    c:\python27\python.exe THE_NAME_OF_FILE

    OR

    c:\python34\python.exe THE_NAME_OF_FILE

• which leads to the interactive terminal, the command line interface (CLI) and Python interpreter.

  NOTE: There's a Quick Start guide in the folder containing the workshop files and gives you a quick 101 in CLI and using the Python interpreter.

The interactiveness of the game delves into taking input from user playing the game, and doing something with it showing the basic datatypes likes numbers and strings, various ways of comparing input to determine the outcome, declaring functions, variables, and data structures like if statements, for and while loops.

A notes for those using Python 3.0 for this workshop:

• raw_input is input

Oh and here are some smiling faces at the workshop. :-)

@CodingGrace getting started @PlayhouseDerry now! pic.twitter.com/9iNhVCo1fq

— Honeycomb (@HoneycombInfo) September 20, 2014

A big thanks to all who came to the workshop, a special thanks to CultureTECH (especially Mark Nagurski), and Honeycomb Creative Works for sponsoring Mick and myself up to Derry. A big congrats to an awesome festival as always.

Upcoming workshops

If you want to find out more upcoming workshops and events, subscribe to our monthly newsletter via CodingGrace.com, follow us at @CodingGrace, like us on our Facebook page.

Here's our September issue, if you have events you want me to add to the next newsletter, let me know - Coding Grace September Newsletter

Data Analytics with Python Workshop Follow-up [INTERMEDIATE]

• Sat, 1st Nov 2014 (FREE)
• DCU, Dublin
• Registration and details...

An evening learning AngularJS [INTERMEDIATE]

• Mon, 10th Nov 2014 (EUR10)
• Adverts.ie, Dublin
• Registration and details...

Want to start a chapter in your area?

Here's how you can get involved.

Feel free to drop me an email at vicky@codinggrace.com as well.

And finally...

...a group shot (a few left before the workshop ended). Note to self: Take picture at beginning/during workshop.

Thanks @CodingGrace for a really great workshop @culturetechfest. Hope u enjoyed visiting @MyCityofCulture ! pic.twitter.com/fg8ljjoNwz

— Honeycomb (@HoneycombInfo) September 21, 2014

Some tweets from the day

@HoneycombInfo @CodingGrace @PlayhouseDerry thanks for the Python workshop #foodforthought

— IM HAPPY Project (@IMHAPPYteam) September 20, 2014

@CodingGrace Had a fantastic time at your Python workshop at CultureTECH today! Thanks again!

— Amy McConkey (@AmyMcConkey1) September 20, 2014

@CodingGrace having fun learning python

— IM HAPPY Project (@IMHAPPYteam) September 20, 2014

@HoneycombInfo @CodingGrace @PlayhouseDerry looking forward to getting stuck in to this :)

— Donna Vaughan (@medv2) September 20, 2014