Google's Python Class (Video, Notes & Exercises)

I had this idea that what if Google was involved in a project where they would make online courses of educational material available for free. Not like bits and pieces of video lecture available from stanford or short video tutorials available from <a href="http://www.khanacademy.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.khanacademy.org/</a>. But actual course material, perhaps starting from 2nd grade to all the way to graduate level courses. There will be a combination of texts and videos and it could be semi wiki like where, certain qualified people can update course material to keep it relevant and up to date.<p>It would probably cost them less than buying a video codec company, but might have bigger and far reaching effect.<p>Imagine a single site will all the educational material, regularly updated. The only difference from a formal education (other than social interaction) is a certification.<p>Crazy (stupid?) idea?

This should print YayYayYay.<p><pre><code> Here is code that calls the above repeat() function, printing what it returns: print repeat('Yay', False) ## Yay</code></pre> <a href="http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/introduction.html" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/int...</a>

Even though Python is a very easy to learn language, I give this two thumbs up for google. Python is really a great amazing language, however I feel sometimes that's very underrated for most of IT people I know, it's not perfect but is powerful and beautiful.

I heard the MIT OCW 6.00 python class on iTunesU is great too.

On a related note, it would be great if Google allowed others to post education materials of length beyond 10 minutes in length, as well. For example, I want to post full-length videos of computer science conferences and talks but this seems to be impossible without applying to the YouTube Partner program, which requires traffic and credentials. Does anybody have such a contact at YouTube?

I have been thinking of learning Python for long time after I read pg's essay about Great Hackers. This will be a good start. Thanks for the link.

He is wearing a Netscape shirt! :D<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcteAbMC1Ok" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcteAbMC1Ok</a>