Who is this Neko?
He is a smart little cat - and like all cats, he loves
chasing mice! He is a bit of a lazy guy, and likes to
sleep when he is not running after mice.
Real cats don’t like being ordered around, but our Neko
is very obedient. You ask him to run around, and he
runs around. You ask him to sleep, and he goes to sleep!
How do you give orders to Neko? By writing tiny programs
in Python, the friendly programming language.
How to start Python on your Computer?
If you are new to computers, ask your mom/dad/friend/teacher
to go and read the chapter of this book which provides
all the instructions necessary to set up Python (and some
other software) on your machine.
But then, there is a chance that your parents, teachers and
friends come to you for advice on how to use the computer!
In that case, go ahead and read that chapter yourself!
Here is what my computer screen looks like when I
start Python - you should also see something similar.
You will see a window with some messages in it - the last line
will look like this:
>>>
We call this the `Python prompt’. It is here that you will
type in small Python programs.
Let’s try something quick - just type:
1+2
and see what happens. Here is what the screen will look like,
after you have typed that in:
>>> 1+2 3 >>>
Programmer’s have a habit of using tough words to say simple
things - they will tell you that Python has evaluated the
expression 1+2, printed the result and is waiting to evaluate
the next expression
Which means, in plain English - you asked Python to find out
1+2, Python did it real quick, was very happy about it, and
wants you to give her more sums to do!
Python can do math, really complicated math, and do it fast!
But the math can wait - we want Neko!
Abracadabra …
Type the following at the Python prompt:
from neko import *
Wait for a moment, and you will see a window popping up.
Now, what is the meaning of that line which we typed?
For the moment, let’s say it is some magical `mantra’
to bring Neko before us! Python will tell you the secret
of this mantra when you become really thick friends!
Anyway, Neko has appeared before us!
It’s time for play!
2 Comments
one of my cousines got a doubt.where to paste
* neko.py
* nekobmaps.py
I gave him the answer paste it in your home directory for eg in mine (/home/jeff/)
after doing this if there is an error shown like this
jeff@debian:~# python
Python 2.4.4 (#2, Apr 5 2007, 20:11:18)
[GCC 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)] on linux2
Type “help”, “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information.
>>> from neko import *
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “”, line 1, in ?
File “neko.py”, line 1, in ?
from Tkinter import *
File “/usr/lib/python2.4/lib-tk/Tkinter.py”, line 41, in ?
raise ImportError, str(msg) + ‘, please install the python-tk package’
ImportError: No module named _tkinter, please install
this error says that you need to install the python-tk package.You can install it from (for debian)
DESTOP>ADMINISTRATION>SYNAPTIS PACKAGE MANAGER
in the search option type :- python-tk
from there install python-tk
Yes Jeffrey - that’s how it should be.
Thanks for tryinig out Neko - if you have any young friends/relatives, ask them to give Neko a test run!