Last year I taught SIPB’s IAP Introduction to Python class. It was a really good experience, so I decided to do it again this year, and last night was the first class. But with Mystery Hunt coming up and other things having my focus, I didn’t really start prepping for the class until the day of.
Apparently Python is trendy these days! I was in a room that seats 65 or so people, and there were lots of people sitting in the aisles.
In spite of being somewhat intimidated by the large audience, and struggling to hit my stride during the beginning of the talk, I think I did a much better job this year once I actually started covering linguistic constructs. In spite of not spending a lot of time preparing this year, I had good notes for the first lecture from last year. But more importantly, I felt like I knew Python better, which really made the difference. I thought that my discussion was more focused, more concise, and more clear.
The room was an impressive mix of skill levels – several people who had never programmed and a few people who had clearly been doing it for years. Both groups asked very good questions as well.
Hopefully I’ll get to spend more time preparing for the next class, because my notes from last year get worse as I get further into the class.