Entrepreneurship School

I was not much more than 12 years old when I started programming; it was back in the days of the American Apollo Programme, way back in the early 70s. The practicalities of this meant going with a neighbour at weekends into his place of work so that we could use an acoustic-coupler to dial in and connect to a computer which was, well, neither of us knew where it was (there were very few of them in existence, so it was probably a shared IBM machine somewhere). Interaction with this remote machine was performed via a teletype. Back in the day, I could explain to people what one of those was by telling them that it was similar to a Telex machine, to which they would wisely nod their heads; later still, I could still say it was like a typewriter. I don't know how to explain it to younger folks today. So much has changed. It was quite some years later when I saw my first actual computer in the flesh; a DEC PDP/8, which loaded its Operating System from seven-hole punched paper-tape; but that's only after someone has physically entered the machine's bootstrap program via an array of switches on its front panel (the bootstrap would then load the operating system). To write programs for these systems required that you learn, or at least understand, Assembler language (that's a very low-level programming language where you work directly with the underlying machine's hardware and logic circuits); on top of that you needed time, as the code/run/debug cycle could in some cases be 24 hours (it was usual that students' code only ran overnight under a system called Batch Processing; so you'd better get it right straight off). Better languages, systems and actual machines of course got better over time, until we get right up-to-date today: a terabyte of memory on a sim card, computers everywhere (both cheap and powerful), and where we find that Python is, according to most polls, the number-one most desirable programming language to learn and use; whether that's in the Compute Cloud; in embedded systems like micro-controllers; or even now as a scripting language built-in to Microsoft's Excel. One might say that we've gone from 24 hour debug cycle to the momentary, fleeting short debug cycle, and it might be worth having a discussion about the pros and cons of each of those someday. Over the years I've learned, used, and in some cases I'm sure, completely forgotten many programming languages and so many machines too, yet I can safely say that Python is the most fun and also the most productive language I have ever known. So much so in fact that I'm constantly thinking of new things to write with it and new ways to use it; purely for the joy of coding and creating new things. Programming truly is like magic. The one bit of advice I'd like to give you as you explore your own personal Python programming journey is to take your time, and secondly, learn what is in the standard library: There's a great deal, but, as the old adage goes, you can't use what you don't know exists.