Hey complete python noob here. Been doing like a “duolingo python app” sort of thing and was recommended Mosh by a friend. Although she does not do python.
Saw python course on sale, bought it but now worried there was a reason it was so cheap…because it doesn’t work or is too irrelevant to todays python to teach a beginner?
I’ve encountered several issues and that is just at the starting point of day 1.
There seems to be a large discrepancy between what Mosh shows on his Mac and python version 3.7.0 to what is todays python 3.12.6
I should’ve written all the issues down when I encountered them to better describe them but I didn’t think I’d have an issue every few minute, but I’ll try and describe a few frustrating ones so far the the best of my memory
-Hello World.
We do print(“Hello World”) and then Ctrl + ` which is supposed to bring up the terminal. It does not. It just opens a copy of the previous window. Luckily I found out how to open terminal I think in another way.
Then he shows that in the terminal it should say HelloWorld $ - no explanation as to what the $ suddenly is and also, it says nothing in my terminal. So that’s already confusing that it’s not the same.
The he says to type python so it should look like this.
HelloWorld $python3 app.py - that makes something magically appear on his screen, but again, not on mine. Mine is blank and his looks like this in the terminal:
HelloWorld $python3 app.py
Hello World
HellowWorld $
am I supposed to write it in myself in the terminal or something? I don’t know, we are never given info. He just does stuff and if you do the same, the same things don’t happen on my end. Anyway, I try to go further.
Now onto other problems.
EXTENSIONS
I install python extension and close vscode and open it again. Now on his screen a pop up immediately shows saying Linter pylint is not installed…where the hell did that come from? It’s not on my screen. So again, I’m lost and getting super frustrated because at this point I think it’s probably because there are things I don’t know I should’ve done on my own, but I’m complete beginner and don’t know. So maybe this beginner course is either not beginner because there are unspoken things or it is an outdated/irrelevant/bad course, should I do a truly beginner course somewhere first?
Now he talks about changing environment by clicking on my version in the bottom. I do that and a tonne of different files but the same version pop up. His has 1 which he clicks. I don’t know which of mine to click so I just click one to set this environment he is talking about. And then he says to click install on the pylint popup (which I still don’t have so what do I do??)
Then we go onto linting I guess?
He writes a code and shows how pylint tells you what is wrong. Then we go to Ctrl + Sht + M to look at the problems. None of it matches what his says and I don’t even know where to begin to describe this but he fixes his problem so it doesn’t give any error and has 0 text in the problems box. I do the same but still have some text in my box.
Anyway we go to Command Palette and type lint to try and select Linter and he mentions different ones, flake8, mypy, pep8, pylint…
Now we’re gonna format some code. We write x=1 and then try to format it into x = 1.
So to change x=1 to the formatted we do Command Palette and search for Format Document, press enter to execute command, and for him another install pops up asking him to install Formatter autopep8.
Again, this doesn’t happen on mine, leaving me in the dust.
He installs it and the opens up Command Palette again to execute the Format Document and thereby autmatically makes x=1 into x = 1
I super exhausted from trying to follow all of this because it is portrayed as straight forward but what he does on his course does not match what happens in reality so what do I do? Having to research how do to everything he asks kinda defeats the purpose of a course I think. Am I missing a prerequisite course or is this just horribly outdated?
I’m so incredibly frustrated at this course and was really looking forward to being a student on the course but yeah, it’s a mountain to climb having to teach yourself outside of the course to just do what he does in the course. Trying to ask on various forums and discords too for some quick responses.
HELP