This is an introduction to programming using Python and the Jython Environment for Students or JES. The Python programming language has been around for many years and is incredibly popular. It is a friendly programming language that is intuitive and succinct. There are many libraries and frameworks that use Python for things like data science, scientific computation, and web development. It is a great first language to learn.
JES was developed to make it easy to introduce programming to students using examples of 'media computation'. This means that the JES allows students to write Python code that manipulates images, sounds, and videos. There is a great book that explains Python and JES called, "Introduction to Computing and Programming in Python A Multimedia Approach" by Mark J. Guzdial and Barbara Ericson. The authors helped create the JES and I highly recommend buying this book to help you learn even more.
What you will see in this 'book' is a collection of code 'playbacks'. Playbacks were designed to help guide a reader through code examples. You will get to see how I wrote some code along with some comments that I made along the way. These comments will have text, screenshots, hand drawn pictures, and video. I hope that this will allow you to get inside my head and that this will demystify the programming process.
When you click on a playback title below it will open a new tab. There are controls to move through the playback. The most important of these are the 'Play/Pause' button and the >> button. Hitting play will animate the code as I wrote it. The playback will pause for comments that I added to the code. Hitting the >> button will skip the animation so you can focus on the code at comment points. Using the >> is the recommended way to quickly move through a playback.
You are ready to begin! Click on the first playback below to begin your journey to learn how to program.