Hello, My son is interested in taking this course, he is 12 but already completed a course in Scratch programming. What compiler do we use for Python on the Mac ?

Question

Hello, My son is interested in taking this course, he is 12 but already completed a course in Scratch programming.  What compiler do we use for Python on the Mac ?

anonymous · Answer

You can use any version of python2 from version 2.5 upward. A recent version like 2.7 would be best. Usually you should already have one installed on you Mac, that you can use. Otherwise you can find the recent Python version on Python.org http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.7.6/ . Just be sure not to use Python3. This is a newer version, that has some improvements, but is not compatible to the code in this course. To allow a nice smooth handling of python, you will want to make sure that you also have IDLE installed.

rsmith6559 · Answer

Word of advice, MIT is engineers, some of the assignments may/will require math that a 12 year old hasn't had. I prefer Stanford's courses because of this. http://see.stanford.edu click on the courses button.

anonymous · Answer

On a Mac, it's easy to use Python since it's already there (version 2.7 is on OS X 10.9.1). Just open up the Terminal application, and type in 'python'. Then put in 'help' or 'help()' for info. The second will give you a link to http://docs.python.org/2.7/tutorial/ to get started with Python.