Lesson 110 min

Welcome to the playground

Code is a precise set of instructions

By the end, you can

Explain what a Python program does
Run code and read its output
Recognize that order matters

Why this matters

Every IOAI notebook begins the same way: you give the computer instructions, run them, inspect what happened, and improve the next instruction.

Mental model

Imagine a very fast kitchen assistant who follows a recipe literally from top to bottom. Python does not guess what you meant. It reads each instruction in order, and the output panel is where it reports the result.

Syntax shelf

The shapes to recognize

Python

print("Hello, Python!")
# A comment explains code
print(2 + 3)

See it move

From instruction to result

Tap through the pipeline. The computer does not skip the middle step.

1 / 3

You writeprint("Hello!")

A precise instruction written in Python.

Active recall

What decides the order in which these instructions run?

Build it

Make the playground print exactly “Hello, Python!” including the comma and exclamation mark.

Expected outputHello, Python!

⌘ Enter to run · ⌘ Shift Enter to check

Need a nudge?

Hints reveal one idea at a time, not the whole answer.