cs 124 PA0: Environment Setup; Jupyter Notebooks and Python

Welcome to PA0! This assignment consists of the following four parts:

• Setup Instructions
• Jupyter Tutorial
• Python Tutorial
• Submitting PA0

The goal of this assignment is to get your coding environment set up for the future assignments and provide some useful introduction to Jupyter Notebooks. We are also including a comprehensive Python tutorial for you to practice your Python skills.

Part 1: Environment Setup

Decide where you will be doing your assignments. There are a couple of different options that we support to varying degrees. You can find our recommendation for what you should choose below. Setup instructions referenced below can be found in the platform directory.

• If you have a personal machine you can use that is reasonably modern/performant and is running MacOS, Linux, or Windows, we strongly recommend you use that for this class.

  • If you have a MacOS machine, go to the MacOS.md file and follow the instructions there.
  • If you have a Linux machine, go to the Linux.md file and follow the instructions there.
  • If you have a Windows machine, go to the Windows.md file and follow the instructions there.

• If you are pretty sure that your personal machine won't work for this class, reach out to the teaching staff and let them know what your situation is like. They will try to figure out the best possible option for you. Generally, there are two possibilities:

  • If possible, we first recommend trying to get things working on Google Colab. You can find the instructions in the Google_Colab.md file.
  • If that is not an option, you can try working remotely on Stanford's rice/myth machines. The instructions can be found in the Remote.md file.

If you run into any issues during the process that you can't figure out, please come to office hours and a CA will be able to help you out. Alternatively, if you post where you're stuck on our online class discussion forum, the teaching staff can help you there as well.

The setup instructions you followed in Part 1 should have directed you through all the steps needed to run Jupyter Notebooks.

Part 2: Jupyter Tutorial

Work through the notebook titled jupyter_tutorial.ipynb, which will teach you the basics of Jupyter Notebooks. Note that we will not cover Python fundamentals in this notebook.

Part 3: Python Tutorial

We highly recommend skimming through our Python tutorial, which can be found in the notebook titled python_tutorial.ipynb, even if you are very comfortable with Python.

We assume you understand the topics reviewed in this notebook in the rest of our class.

Part 4: Submit PA0

Now that you have set up everything successfully, you can submit your first PA to Gradescope - see pa0.ipynb for more!

Done!

You are done with PA0!