Software for CS111

This page provides links to download software for this class onto your personal laptop. In an ideal scenario, all three programs would be downloaded to your personal laptop before the first day of class.

CS111 students need the following:

1. Thonny (to write/run Python code)

2. Download and run a test Jupyter notebook (see details below)

If you encounter problems with the installation process, please email Peter Mawhorter (pmawhort).

Instructions

1. Thonny

You can download installers for Thonny below. By clicking on the blue links below, the installer will automatically download to your machine. Double-click on the installer, and it will start the process of installing Thonny.

• Thonny for Mac

• Thonny for Windows

You'll see this screen when the installer starts:

Click through each of the sections (License, Destination Select, Installation Type, Installation, Summary). When given options, if you are uncertain, use the default suggested by the installer. Eventually, you will arrive at this screen:

which tells you that Thonny was successfully installed on your machine. We will review how to use Thonny during the first lab.

2. Test a Jupyter notebook

We'll use Jupyter notebooks in lab where you can write and run python code. Please use this link to download a zip file containing a Jupyter notebook (along with some other files).

Instructions:

1. Clicking on the link above should automatically download the lec_example.zip file to your computer. This file should end up in your Downloads folder.
2. In the Downloads folder, Unzip the lec_example.zip file, which creates the folder lec_example. Some systems automatically unzip the file to create the folder. If not, you'll need to do it manually:
   • To unzip a .zip file on a Mac, double-click it.
   • To unzip a .zip file on Windows, right-click and choose Extract here.
3. Using Thonny, open the launchNotebook.py file in the lec_example folder within the Downloads folder. To do this in Thonny, from the File menu, select Open, and navigate to your Downloads folder, the lec_example folder within the Downloads folder, and the launchNotebook.py file within the lec_example folder Select launchNotebook.py and press the Open button. At this point, your Thonny window should be displaying the launchNotebook.py file in the editor pane at the top of the window, and the Python shell at the bottom of the window should be mostly empty, like this:
4. Click the Thonny run button (or choose Run current script from the Run menu) to run the launchNotebook.py file. It may take a moment because it has to install some things, but this should only be necessary once. It should display a bunch of output in the Pythton shell at the bottom of the Thonny window, and eventually launch a tab in your web browser, displaying the Jupyter notebook when it's done.
5. Make sure the notebook is working. It should look something like this: Follow the instructions in the notebook to verify that it works as expected.

If you run into trouble following these steps, please email Peter Mawhorter (pmawhort) for help.