Last Saturday's workshop went really well. Aside from the confusion with the location, technical glitch (I blame EventBrite), I manned the gates while Christina walked up and down the road to make sure we have not left behind lost workshoppers. :-)

We used iPython Notebook which Mick kindly served up to everyone to create their own notebook and we got stuck straight into Learning Python the Hard Way.

The pace was easy, with breaks and lunch, everyone was fed and watered. Mentors were on hand to help out with any questions. I typed up the exercises alongside folks and explained what we typed. And copying-and-pasting was a big no. This will help people be wary of what they are typing and running.

Questions typically asked were

• difference between single and double quotes
• escaping characters
• how to add a newline in a block of text when printing out
• why does %s not printout as "%s"? 
• why are True and False print out as True and False without quotes?
• (and more, I'm pretty sure I left out lots)

In the end we wrapped up with exercise 11, it was nice one to wrap up to. I hope most people understood string and numeric datatypes.

As I have explained in the workshop, these exercised can be done at home by oneself, but it's the added mentors at hand and the camaraderie of meeting and working with each other helps lift the fear of asking questions, encouraging people to experiment, don't be afraid to break things and the best thing of all, learning the best practices as workshop progressed.

I would like to thank the following mentors:  Eugene Eichelberger, Christina Lynch, Mick Twomey & Stephanie Francis.

And a big thanks to Engine Yard for hosting our workshop and Propylon for covering the costs of tables and chairs.

And of course and not least, a big thank you to all those who came along and participated.

The next workshop (Part 2) will hopefully be in November. So keep an eye out on our Twitter and Facebook page. 

Any questions, feel free to email: codinggrace@gmail.com

Below are a few tweets I found about last Saturday.