Running your first program (no install needed)

Module 2 ended with a promise: in this module you stop reading about code and actually run some. Today. In the next few minutes, in fact.

Here is the secret nobody tells beginners: the hardest part of starting to code is not the code. It is the setup. Installing Python, picking an editor, fighting mysterious settings and version numbers — that wall has defeated more would-be programmers than any actual programming ever has. So we are going to walk around the wall entirely.

The zero-install option

The best-known free notebook is Google Colab — go to colab.research.google.com, sign in with any Google account, and click New notebook. If you prefer alternatives, Replit and Jupyter work the same way. Any of them is fine; this course assumes Colab because it is free and needs zero setup.