Computer labs

Computer Labs of appbio15

This course has four labs consisting of sets of assignments and one larger programming project.

Preparations

For the later parts of the course, you may need to issue the commands:

  module use /info/DD2404/appbio15/module
  module add appbio15

before working on your assignments. You can put these commands in a file ~/.bashrc to have them run every you log in to the course computers.

Single or group?

You are welcome to work in pairs. In fact, this is highly recommended, especially for beginners, since you will have someone to discuss problems with and simply have more fun.

Get in line! with QWait

To make it easier for the lab tutors to find the next person in line, we will use the lab queuing system QWait. Check it out at qwait.csc.kth.se where we will have a queue for this course. This is the first year we use this service (the old system, SIMA has been turned off), so there might be some hiccups. 

Editing Python code

There are many different code editors you can use in this course. The school computers have gedit installed. Write

  gedit &

to get a nice graphical user interface suitable for Python programming! The ampersand (&) ensures that you can continue to work in the terminal.

If you work on your own computer, you might want to try PyCharm, Atom.io, Sublime, TextWrangler, or some other editor might work great. 

Python actually has its own programming editor: start it by running "idle".

Many people, in particular with more experience, feel that Eclipse is the only way to go. This integrated development environment, IDE, have many and convenient features.

Any Real (old) Programmer will use a classic programming text editor such as Emacs! This editor has everything, including a steep learning curve! If you write programs, or know you will spend a lot of time editing code in the future, you might want to consider using Emacs for editing code in this course. Start it by writing:

  emacs &

Some people decide to use a lesser, yet popular, editor like VIM. Apparently, that works too.

There are simplistic text editors without all the hard-to-use bells and whistles of Emacs, and a good alternativ choice is gedit. Write

  gedit &

to get a nice graphical user interface suitable for Python programming!

The labs

The actual lab assignments are found in the menu in the left margin! But you should read this page before starting on them!