Resources

Development Environment

The course uses a cloud-based coding environment through Coder, so you don’t need to install anything locally.

Log in at Calvin’s Coder instance and open a workspace
Your workspace includes Python, Jupyter, and all required libraries pre-installed
What is Coder? — remote development environments in a browser
Tip: your files persist within your workspace — always save your notebooks before closing

Weekly demos are provided as notebooks on Google Colab — no setup required, runs in a browser.

All course work is done in Jupyter notebooks (.ipynb files) — documents that mix executable code, output, and text in a single file.

Key concepts:

A notebook is made up of cells — each cell is either code (Python) or text (Markdown)
Run a cell with Shift + Enter; the output appears directly below it
Cells share state within a session — variables defined in one cell are available in others
Order matters: run cells top-to-bottom; re-run if you change something earlier

Common pitfalls:

Restarting the kernel clears all variables — you’ll need to re-run cells from the top
Output is saved in the file, but the kernel state is not — always re-run on a fresh open
Before submitting, use Kernel → Restart & Run All to confirm your notebook runs clean from top to bottom

References:

Lab assignments are distributed and submitted through GitHub Classroom.

Sign up for GitHub — use your .edu email to get the Student Developer Pack for free
Each lab will give you a GitHub Classroom link that creates a personal repo for your work
Push your completed notebook to your repo to submit

Getting started with Git & GitHub:

git add .
git commit -m "completed lab"
git push