\nThis is the first section of the first chapter of a new book project I am playing with called “Python for Informatics” which is a remix of the book “Think Python” by Allen B. Downey. Comments welcome.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nWriting programs (or programming) is a very creative
\nand rewarding activity. You can write programs for
\nmany reasons ranging from making your living to solving
\na difficult data analysis problem to having fun to helping
\nsomeone else solve a problem. This book assumes that everyone needs to know how to program and that once
\nyou know how to program, you will figure out what you want
\nto do with your newfound skills.<\/p>\n
\nWe are surrounded in our daily lives with computers ranging
\nfrom laptops to cell phones. We can think of these computers
\nas our “personal assistants” who can take care of many things
\non our behalf. The hardware in our current-day computers
\nis essentially built to continuously as us the question,
\n“What would you like me to do next?”.<\/p>\n
\nOur computers are fast and have vasts amounts of memory and
\ncould be very helpful to us if we only knew the language to
\nspeak to explain to the computer what we would like it to
\n“do next”. If we knew this language we could tell the
\ncomputer to do tasks on our behalf that were reptitive.
\nInterestingly, the kinds of things computers can do best
\nare often the kinds of things that we humans find boring
\nand mind-numbing.<\/p>\n
\nFor example, look at the first three paragraphs of this
\nchapter and tell me the most commonly used word and how
\nmany times the word is used. While you were able to read
\nand understand the words in a few seconds, counting them
\nis almost painful because is is not the kind of problem
\nthat human minds are designed to solve. For a computer
\nthe opposite is true, reading and understanding text
\nfrom a piece of paper is hard for a computer to do
\nbut counting the words and telling you how many times
\nthe most used word was used is very easy for the
\ncomputer:<\/p>\n
\npython words.py\nEnter file:words.txt\nto 16\n<\/pre>\n\nOur “personal information analysis assistant” quickly
\ntold us that the word “to” was used ten times in the
\nfirst three paragraphs of this chapter.<\/p>\n\nIt is this very fact that computers are good at things
\nthat humans are not so good at is why you need to become
\nskilled at talking “computer language”. Once you learn
\nthis new language, you can delegate mundane tasks
\nto your partner (the computer), leaving more time
\nfor you to do the
\nthings that you are uniquely suited for. You bring
\ncreativity, intuition, and inventiveness to this
\npartnership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is the first section of the first chapter of a new book project I am playing with called “Python for Informatics” which is a remix of the book “Think Python” by Allen B. Downey. Comments welcome. Writing programs (or programming) is a very creative and rewarding activity. You can write programs for many reasons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2785,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678\/revisions\/2785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}