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:
-
Thonny (to write/run Python code)
- 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.
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:
- Clicking on the link above should automatically download the
lec_example.zip
file to your computer. This file should end up in yourDownloads
folder. - In the
Downloads
folder, Unzip thelec_example.zip
file, which creates the folderlec_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.
- To unzip a
- Using Thonny, open the
launchNotebook.py
file in thelec_example
folder within theDownloads
folder. To do this in Thonny, from the File menu, select Open, and navigate to yourDownloads
folder, thelec_example
folder within theDownloads
folder, and thelaunchNotebook.py
file within thelec_example
folder SelectlaunchNotebook.py
and press the Open button. At this point, your Thonny window should be displaying thelaunchNotebook.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: - 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. - 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.