✓ Checklists Where is everything? What do I need before each class? What sort of computing setup do I need? Answers in a handy checklist form!

✓ Starting Each Class Open your laptop, prepare to get hands-on! Details: Open the Class Schedule Table, so you will have access to today's materials (LINK ↗) Open the MS Teams course forum, get ready for chat (LINK →) Start your Python application into the shell environment (= IDLE). Open your designated script folder on your laptop where you save your Python scripts. ✓ Computer/Software Setup Python setup No Python on your machine? Install the latest version, currently 3.12 (3.11 is fine too). I recommend the Anaconda distribution. Head to https://www.anaconda.com/download and follow instructions. Note that Anaconda Python comes bundled with many popular 3rd party software libraries, therefore it takes up a lot of space on your disk storage (around 10GB). It will likely take a LONG time to install as well. Alternatively, if you don't mind manual library management, you can install the official python.org version from https://www.python.org. Installation instructions: Windows and Mac. IDLE shell is the Python environment of choice for this class. On Anaconda Python, IDLE is somewhat buried and it takes a bit of figuring out how to access it. For Mac folks, it is simple: open up Terminal and type in idle &, then ENTER key. It may be idle3 instead. Windows folks: here's how you can create a handy shortcut. DO IT -- it's absolutely worth the trouble! Ultimately, your Python work environment should look like this: (Windows), (Mac OS). Don't want to use IDLE? Your favorite IDE might work just fine for this class, as long as it has a built-in Python shell environment. Check with me. Other setup On your laptop, create a class folder where you will keep your Python scripts for this class. Suggestion: "ling1330" under your Documents folder. Windows people: congrats, there's some additional setup you need to do. :-) Follow the instructions here. DO NOT SKIP!! Taking screenshots Windows (see this page for explanation): Classic way: PrtSc or Alt + PrtSc, then Ctrl+V to paste New: Shift + WindowsKey + S then use Snip & Sketch app Mac (See this page for explanation): Command + Shift + 4 to capture a region or a particular window, ... + 3 for the entire Desktop IDLE command history Windows: Alt+P (previous command), Alt+N (next command) Mac: Ctrl+P (previous command), Ctrl+N (next command) Recommendation: remap them to ⇧ / ⇩ (UP/DOWN arrows), they are much quicker! Instructions here. IDLE and command line, when you're stuck Ctrl + C to abort a mistyped command and return to clean prompt NLTK setup Install NLTK Anaconda users (Win/Mac): nltk is already on your system, so no need to install. Skip to the the next step to download the data pack only. Students using python.org distribution should install NLTK through pip. Windows instruction, Mac instruction. (NEW!) If you still can't import nltk after installation, see this FAQ. This happens when you have multiple Python distributions on your machine. Download NLTK data Everyone: after installing nltk, download NLTK's data pack. Confirm your NLTK is all set: screenshot.