4,222 Introduction to Programming

Recap Quiz week 1: Getting Started with Python and uv

This is a non-graded recap quiz to reinforce concepts from lecture 01b. Estimated time: 15-20 minutes. Ideally, complete this before starting Exercise 2 (git).

Exercise 1: Navigate with the terminal

Without using any graphical file explorer, complete the following tasks using only the terminal:

1. From your home directory (~), navigate to Introduction_to_programming/exercises/week_01
2. Go back to the parent directory (exercises/)
3. List the contents of the exercises/ directory
4. Navigate back to Introduction_to_programming using a relative path
5. Print your current working directory to confirm you are in the right place

Solution

Windows (command prompt)

cd exercises\week_01
cd ..
dir
cd ..
cd

Mac (bash)

cd ~/Documents/Introduction_to_programming/exercises/week_01
cd ..
ls
cd ..
pwd

Exercise 2: Understand your environment

Answer the following questions by inspecting files and using the terminal. No coding required.

1. Open the pyproject.toml file in VS Code (the one created in Exercise 1). What Python version is specified? What dependencies are listed?
2. Where is the Python interpreter located in your .venv folder? Give the full path.
3. What does uv add pandas do?
4. If you delete the .venv folder, how would you recreate the environment? (Hint: think about which files uv uses to know what to install.)

Solution

1. Open pyproject.toml in VS Code. Under [project], you should see requires-python = ">=3.14.1". Under dependencies, you should see ipykernel, pandas, and numpy.

2. The Python interpreter path:

Windows

Introduction_to_programming\exercises\week_01\.venv\Scripts\python.exe

Mac

Introduction_to_programming/exercises/week_01/.venv/bin/python

3. uv add pandas installs the package inside the project’s virtual environment and records it in pyproject.toml and uv.lock.

4. One way is to run uv init --python 3.14.1 then uv add <package> for each dependency listed in pyproject.toml. Another way, which we haven’t see specifically in the exercises, is to recreate the environment by running uv sync in the project directory. uv reads pyproject.toml and uv.lock to reinstall the exact same packages and Python version.

Exercise 3: Create a project folder

Navigate to exercises/week_01_recap/ (create the folder if it doesn’t exist yet). Initialize a uv project with Python 3.14.1 and add the ipykernel package. Then answer:

1. Does this project share the same .venv as your week_01 project? Check by looking at the .venv folders.
2. Run uv run python -c "import pandas; print(pandas.__version__)" inside week_01_recap. What happens and why?
3. Now go back to week_01 and run the same command. What happens and why?

Solution

Windows (command prompt)

cd exercises\week_01_recap
uv init --python 3.14.1
uv add ipykernel

uv run python -c "import pandas; print(pandas.__version__)"

cd ..\week_01
uv run python -c "import pandas; print(pandas.__version__)"

Mac (bash)

cd ~/Documents/Introduction_to_programming/exercises/week_01_recap
uv init --python 3.14.1
uv add ipykernel

uv run python -c "import pandas; print(pandas.__version__)"

cd ../week_01
uv run python -c "import pandas; print(pandas.__version__)"

1. No. Each project has its own .venv folder. week_01_recap/.venv and week_01/.venv are separate, isolated environments.

2. Inside week_01_recap, the command fails with ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pandas'. We only added ipykernel to this project, not pandas.

3. Back in week_01, the command prints the version of pandas (e.g., 2.2.3). We added pandas to week_01 in the previous exercise session. This demonstrates why virtual environments exist: each project is isolated and only has the packages you explicitly added to it.