Python for Kids: Part 1 — Hello World!

Python is a fun programming language that is used to solve all kinds of problems, including the problem of personal boredom. This multi-part tutorial is for people with little to no programming experience. While there are plenty of resources on the internet for kids to begin learning how to program, I wanted to make it as easy as possible to get started. As a father of two small children, I also wanted to create this as a resource for parents, who may not know anything about programming, to work with their kids.

Often times a programming language tutorial will begin with how to install the language on your computer. I will diverge from doing that because it is my goal to make this as easy as possible to get started, and thankfully there are other options today to make this possible. For this tutorial we will be using snippets from tech.io, an amazing site that allows us to run a bunch of programming languages from the browser! Therefore if you are here reading this tutorial, then you should be able to run the examples. Let’s get started!

Hello World!

When beginning to learn how to program a new language often times the very first example is a “Hello World” program, so let’s start with that. Here is an example of “Hello World” in Python, you can run the program by clicking the big blue “Run” button.

Congratulations, you have run a Python program! Let’s talk about what just happened. When you clicked “Run”, a Python application was executed and the result should be showing “Hello World!” as “Standard Output”. Don’t worry to much about what standard output is right now, all you need to know is we told Python to “talk to us” using the print() function. We told Python to “say” — “Hello World!”. A point that is important to remember and understand: we told the program what to say, we didn’t ask. Computers are dumb, people are smart. Computers only do what we tell them to.

Computers are dumb, people are smart. Computers only do what we tell them to.

Why do I mention this? There will be times of frustration where the program or computer isn’t doing what you want it to do. It is important to always remember that computers only do what we tell them to do, and so the solution to the problem aways exists between the chair and the keyboard.

Don’t panic, I believe in you.

Let’s recap! Python is fun. Anyone can learn it. I believe in you! This was a super basic tutorial but I hope you’ll join me for the following parts. Next up is learning about variables. If you liked this tutorial so far please clap it up and follow so you’ll be notified when the next part comes out. Thanks for reading!