Introduction to Python

Here we are in our first week of GIS Programming.  This week focused on setting up our folders in our S:/ drive and getting a basic understanding of Python scripting and editors.  The editors we looked at were IDLE, PythonWin, and the Python editor which is in ArcMap 10.5.1.  Within these editors, a simple script was run to display the text "Hello World".  Nothing too fancy, just enough to show how different elements are highlighted and displayed in the different editors.  For the most part we will be using PythonWin for this course. 

To set up our folders for the course, we used a python script vice manually creating 3 folders for each of the 12 modules in the course.  The screenshot below shows the outcome of this script.

The overall process summary felt like an introduction to completing process summaries.  This one focused on showing where you store your data, asked some questions from the reading, and then had us explain how a certain step was completed in our own words.  This introduction to process summaries would be beneficial to first time students or those who have been away for a couple of semesters. 

Other than that, this was probably the only simple week I can hope to have during this course.  My coding/scripting skills are extremely rusty, but I am hoping it will all come back quickly and overall I am looking forward to this course.