CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing

Thanks for helping make this a better resource for people learning Python! 🐍

This course is aimed at absolute beginners, so the guiding principle is: clear and simple beats clever.

Ways to help

• Fix typos or confusing wording.
• Improve an explanation or add a helpful example.
• Add a new exercise (with a solution).
• Suggest a new lesson or capstone project.

Lesson structure

Each module under course/NN-topic/ follows the same shape — please match it:

course/NN-topic/
  README.md     the lesson
  examples/     numbered, runnable scripts (01_*.py, 02_*.py, …)
  exercises/    starter files: task in a docstring + a TODO
  solutions/    one solution per exercise, same filename

The lesson README.md follows this order: a one-line intro → What you'll learn → numbered concept sections (each with a ▶️ Run it pointer) → a 💡 Try it yourself → a Common mistakes table → a Recap / cheat-sheet → Exercises → a Next → link.

Style guidelines

• Target Python 3.10+. Use f-strings.
• Keep examples small and focused on the topic at hand.
• Don't use a concept before the lesson that introduces it (e.g. no list comprehensions before lesson 12).
• Every .py file should run with python <file>.py without errors.
• Exercise files state the exact expected output; the solution must produce it exactly.
• Avoid jargon, or explain it the first time you use it.

Before you open a pull request

Run every Python file you added or changed and confirm it works:

# example: check one module
for f in course/07-loops/examples/*.py course/07-loops/solutions/*.py; do
  echo "== $f =="; python3 "$f"
done

For interactive files (those using input()), test by piping input:

printf '4\n6\n' | python3 course/08-input-output/solutions/02_add_two_numbers.py

Then open a pull request describing what you changed and why. Thank you! 🙌