I’d like to preface this by saying I am not an engineer/programmer nor do I have any coding experience.
I’ve completed AI for Everyone and Generative AI for Everyone. I progressed to Agentic AI and there are labs that require Python/Jupyter. I’ve gone through the Module 1 instructions, the Python Tutorial book and a couple of Youtube tutorials and still nothing. I downloaded Python 3.14 but can’t even create and activate a virtual environment. No matter what I type into the Python UI I just get syntax errors and nothing happens. Am I out of luck if I don’t know how to use them?
Virtual environments are surprisingly complicated. I’m a dabbling programmer, and it took me years and many attempts before I could grasp and remember the process.
So don’t feel bad. It’s not that simple, or as obvious as many tutorials make it appear. It’s because the tutorials are mostly written by people who are already experts, and they are no longer familiar with how to write the instructions that a novice can learn from.
These courses assume that learners have some amount of programming experience - even in a course that says it’s an AI course. The AI is in the tools - not in how you set up the tools.
Sorry, there’s not much I can say to make this easier, just know that you’re not unique in finding this challenging.
Right! If you are completely new to programming, there is a lot to learn. If your plan is to continue exploring this space, it would be worth spending the time to take an introductory python programming course. There are many on Coursera (and I’m sure on other MOOC platforms) and there is even one here from Professor Ng. I have not taken that one, but it is a “short course”. If this is really your first intro to any kind of programming, I’d recommend something like Python for Everybody from the University of Michigan.