Unclear instructions about folder structure

[demidovakatya]

You wrote:

---

When you work through each project, make a new directory within Projects to keep your code away from the sample code. For example:

└── Projects/
    └── new-coder/
        # <-- snip -->
        ├── apis/     # sample code for tutorial #2
        ├── apis_workspace/ # your code for tutorial #2
        ├── dataviz/  # sample code for tutorial #1
        ├── dataviz_workspace/ # your code for tutorial #1
        ├── gui/      # sample code for tutorial #5
        ├── gui_workspace/ # your code for tutorial #5
        ├── network/  # sample code for tutorial #4
        ├── network_workspace/ # your code for tutorial #4
        ├── scrape/   # sample code for tutorial #3
        ├── scrape_workspace/ # your code for tutorial #3
        └── website/  # files that make newcoder.io

---

At this point, it's easy to understand the instructions and follow them.

But then, in the dataviz tutorial I see these instructions:

$ cd new-coder/dataviz
$ mkvirtualenv DataVizProj

Open up parse.py, found: new-coder/dataviz/tutorial_source/parse.py

I know it is a stupid question, but I just want to learn some cool stuff in Python. Extra difficulties are very demotivating. Could you please explain this stuff about folders? Should I:

• create project_workspace folders and type the code following your tutorials? (but why downloading your code, then?..)
• follow your tutorials and write the code without creating new folders?
• read the code from the new-coder directory (downloaded from this repo) and write some other stuff?
• use git, and branches, and merge stuff (and suffer)?
• stop bothering and begin writing the code wherever I want?

Thanks :)

[Anmol-Singh-Jaggi]

+1

[eenblam]

The directory structure described above is intended to keep the code provided by authors separate from the code you write. The main reason one might want both is to be able to check that the end product actually works before bothering to read the tutorial. It can also be a nice sanity check if your version doesn't work at the end.

I realize I'm a bit late to the game here, but you might enjoy just coding along with the tutorial (they're pretty short) and then trying to do your own thing with the libraries you learned. That's a perfectly good way to go. Have fun!