Posted in 2020
Python Tutorial FAQ - Part 3
- 18 November 2020
Here is a compilation of questions from the third session of the Python Tutorial Seminar Series which covered writing functions as well as f-string formatting.
Q. Seeing how 2/2 returns 1.0 instead of 1, is the numeric type automatically determined from the inputs or do you have to force it?
Python Tutorial FAQ - Part 2
- 05 November 2020
Here is a compilation of questions and issues that arose during the second session of the Python Tutorial Seminar Series, on creating a data dictionary. After this first short series, these FAQ sections will be added to the Xdev tutorial website
Q. Why is list[0:10] the first 10 elements, not 11?
Python Tutorial FAQ
- 20 October 2020
Here is a compilation of questions and issues that arose during the first session of the Python Tutorial Seminar Series. Hopefully all attendees feel that their issues are addressed here.
Q. I am having issues running the command:
curl -kO https://sundowner.colorado.edu/weather/atoc8/wxobs20170821.txt.
What should I do?
Tutorial Seminar Series
- 18 September 2020
Because we are unable to host an in-person tutorial for this fall season, the Xdev team has decided to switch to a virtual seminar series. We will be hosting one hour tutorial sessions scheduled for the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of each month at 1 PM Mountain starting in October. The first tutorial session, covering how to create your first Python script, will be on October 14th. Some tutorials will be 1-off seminars on specific topics, while others will span multiple seminar sessions.
Remote tutorials offer their own challenges; no one from our team can walk around the room to notice if anyone needs technical help or one-on-one assistance during a challenging topic. We believe that one hour sessions make it easier for participants to reach out and get the help they need to catch up before the next session of a multi-part seminar, so that we can more effectively reach our education goals.
Writing multiple netCDF files in parallel with xarray and dask
- 29 June 2020
A typical computation workflow with xarray consists of:
reading one or more netCDF files into an xarray dataset backed by dask using xr.open_mfdataset() or xr.open_dataset(chunks=...),
Templating isn’t just for Web Developers!
- 08 May 2020
Recently, I found myself rambling on in an unprepared attempt to explain templating to a colleague of mine who had no prior experience with frontend design. It didn’t take me long to realize that my explanation was convoluted and confusing, not that I stopped talking, mind you. Attribute that to being unprepared, or sleep deprived (i.e., child still not sleeping through the night!), or just a bad teacher.
Regardless, I decided to point them to a tutorial online that certainly must exist, but after a brief Google search (which you should read as, “I didn’t find anything in the first page of search results!”), all I could find were tutorials for frontend developers. And if you aren’t an HTML expert, or already have experience with Flask or Django, teaching templating in those contexts can actually be more confusing than illuminating.