CS65 Lab 1: Getting started with Thonny Due: Thurs, Feb 03, 2022

Lab 1: Getting started with Thonny

Course: CS65 - Introduction to Computer Science (Spring 2022)
Instructor: Md Alimoor Reza, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Drake University
Due: Thursday February 03, 11:50 PM

Part 1: Installing our favorite IDE ‘Thonny’

An IDE – Integrated Development Environment – is a tool that programmers use to create, run, and
test new programs. It contains a text editor, a compiler/interpreter for translating the code into machine
understandable instructions, and an an executable environment for showing the result of the program. We
will be using the Python programming language along with an IDE for creating Python programs. We
recommend Thonny as an IDE which is a very user friendly tool and freely available online.

Step 1: Download and installation: Open your favorite web browser, eg, Mozilla Firefox, Google
Chrome, etc. and go to the website https://thonny.org. On the upper-right corner you will notice the
download link as shown below. Click on the Mac button and save the *.pkg file.

Click on the Download button for Mac

Double-click on the ‘thonny-3.3.13.pkg’ and it will pop up a window for installation. Follow the steps as
instructed. To help you guide the installation process, we are attaching the relevant snapshots during the
installations.

Double-click on the ‘thonny-3.3.13.pkg’.

Follow the installation instruction as shown above.

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CS65 Lab 1: Getting started with Thonny Due: Thurs, Feb 03, 2022

Step 2: Openning up Thonny If you correctly follow the installation process, Thonny will be installed
in your Applications folder as shown below.

Click on the Thonny icon to launch it.

Finally, we will be able to see the Thonny interface as shown below. We will be writing all our assignments,
labs, and other practice programming in Python here. Yay!!! We installed it successfully and ready to write
program in Python!.

Step 3: Writing your first python program in Thonny We will be writing a very simple program.
We will create a python file (with a *.py extension) where our python instructions will be saved. By default,
Thonny opens an unnamed file in the a text editor (top text pane). It is a very good practice to write a
formal header and suppress it as comments. A line of code with a preceding # is considered as comment
in Python. You should type in the necessary parts as shown below eg, your name, your contact email,
description, etc.. Once you finish typing in, click on the Save button as shown below.

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CS65 Lab 1: Getting started with Thonny Due: Thurs, Feb 03, 2022

Now, save the file using the format as follows firstname lastname lab1.py (all in lowercase letters). For
example, I saved my file as md reza lab1.py. To maintain consistency, we will follow the same file naming
format for the rest of the semester. You will be prompted to save the file in a specific directory. For example,
I saved it in a new folder called ‘cs65’ in the ‘Desktop’. Feel free to save it in other places of your choice.
Hit the ‘Run’ button as shown below to execute your program. If everything goes well, in the ‘Shell’ menu
(the bottom text pane), you will see the line “Yay! this is my first python program in CS65!” ash shown
below.

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CS65 Lab 1: Getting started with Thonny Due: Thurs, Feb 03, 2022

Please, take a screenshot of this last step so that we could verify that you have successfully executed your
first python program.

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CS65 Lab 1: Getting started with Thonny Due: Thurs, Feb 03, 2022

Part 2: Playing with Thonny

Driver and navigator: Now, you will be doing collaborative work for this lab. These exercises should
be completed with your assigned partner. Both of you will take turns playing the role of i) the driver and
ii) the navigator. The driver’s responsibility is to type into Thonny when completing each exercise. The
navigator’s responsibility is to support the driver by reading the exercises, looking up relevant readings, and
identifying errors.

Tasks and file submission: This lab consists of several small tasks. We expect that you submit a file
(a python file with a .py extension) that should have answers to each of these tasks. In your python file,
denote the tasks using comments. For example you could just write:

You should submit your individual copy by acknowledging your partner’s name at the beginning of your
python file (inside a comment); if you could manage to finish it during class, that great! If you cannot
complete the lab during class today, you can complete it individually (or together) sometime before next
Tuesday.

Task 1: arithmetic operations Open up the file you have created in Part 1 of this lab. You could use
the Open button in Thonny to locate your saved file.

Then modify the comment section in your file with your partner’s name as follows:

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CS65 Lab 1: Getting started with Thonny Due: Thurs, Feb 03, 2022

In the Python shell environment, let’s do some arithmetic operations such as addition, multiplication, divi-
sion, etc. The shell environment allows you to play interactively with Python. It is a Read, Evaluate, Print,
Loop (REPL). Every line you type into the shell is immediately executed, and any value it produces is then
printed to the display. I tried the following operations.

Try out these operations with different numbers of your choice and see what happens. In your python file,
do the same operations but instead of typing them, put the operations inside print() function as follows:

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CS65 Lab 1: Getting started with Thonny Due: Thurs, Feb 03, 2022

Hit the Run button to execute your program and see the outputs. Explain the difference between the two
division operations. You could do this as a comment in your python file. Recall that you can add a comment
in your python file with the help of a # symbol. Try out arithmetic operations with two more operators:
i)% and ii)**. Observe the results and find out the functions of these two operators.

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CS65 Lab 1: Getting started with Thonny Due: Thurs, Feb 03, 2022

Task 2: variables and expressions You can create a variable through the use of an assignment operator
=. In other words, you can store something (numbers or textual data) in variables; later use them for other
operations. A sequence of characters is referred to as a string. A string is denoted by being enclosed by
double quotes “ ” or single quotes ‘ ’ in Python. Let’s initialize some variables with different numbers and
strings.

Type these lines in your Python file and initialize the variables accordingly.
You can print the variables to see contents stored inside them. A fragment of Python code that calculates
a new value called an expression. In the code above, for example, you can convert miles into kilometers
using the following expression:

Python evaluates this expression as follows. The multiplication operator * has been used to calculate a
new value. The values stored inside the two variables num of miles and mile to kilometer are retrieved back
during the multiplication process. Finally, we initialized a new variable num of kilometers with the newly
calculated value.
Follow the same instructions in your python file and replicate the result. Now create a new variable full name
so that it is initialized with the full name? You should use the existing variables first name and last name
in order to accomplish this goal so that when you print full name you the following output:

Hints: You can also apply the operator ‘+’ in between strings. It will concatenate the two strings. Within
the print statement, use commas between the variables and strings.

Task 3: receiving input from the user The built-in function print() shows the output in the shell
environment. There is another built-in function in Python that allows us to receive input from the user.
You can invoke the following line of Python code to accomplish this:

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CS65 Lab 1: Getting started with Thonny Due: Thurs, Feb 03, 2022

Type in the above two lines in your python file and try to receive different numbers from the user. You need
to press return in order to see the output in the shell.
Now try to do arithmetic operations on the entered number. Let’s try to convert the unit of the height variable
from inches to feet. If you try to directly manipulate the variable height with an arithmetic operator, you
will encounter an error message. The variable height is a string and you can’t divide a string. Hint: convert
the variable to a number first. Your output should look like this:

What to turn in:

Please submit python file containing your source code (*.py file with proper naming convention described
above). Please make sure that your code runs prior to submission. Log in to Blackboard and find Lab 1.

When you click on Lab 1, another window will pop-up. Press on the View assessment button.

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CS65 Lab 1: Getting started with Thonny Due: Thurs, Feb 03, 2022

Upload your file by clicking on the ‘Attachment’ link. Once it is uploaded, hit the submit button to finish
the submission process.

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