Python is a language with an easy to understand syntax. It has a rich coding environment and comes built in with a debugger and profiler. Due to its simplicity, it is easy for beginners to learn and is mostly used in areas such as data science and machine learning. This course is an introduction to Python programming and is ideal for students with no prior experience. In this course we cover data types, loops, dictionaries, file handling, error handling, functions, and Object-Oriented Programming, all with practical examples. The examples used in this course are drawn from real world scenarios such as working with files, extracting data from zip files, plotting graphs and analyzing data, performing repetitive tasks, working with CSV files and simple simulations. Finally, we put together all we have learnt and build 10 programs.

The Course is broken down into 11 sections

Section 1 Introduction

This section introduces the Python language, its motive for creation and where you can install the program. We also look at Pythons development environment IDLE and see how we can customize it. Moving forward we look at saving files on the cloud, where we can get help if we are stuck and finally build our first program.

Section 2 Strings

In this section we work with a very important data type, the string datatype we investigate the string class and understand its structure and methods, its indexing and format specifiers for formatting output.

Section 3 Operators and Loops

Logical provide our programs with an intelligence to compare values and make decisions in code. Here we work with logical operators, if, if-else, if-else if, statements.

Section 4

loops allow a section of code or program to repeat until a condition is met. We will work with pythons for loop, nested for loops and examples to fortify our skills. We also use the while loop with break and continue to exit code once a condition is met.

Section 5 Functions

Using Functions allows us to group pieces of similar code into one bundle and can be called as much as we like. Here, we understand the rules of creating pythons’ function and its syntax while using parameters and scopes. We will also understand how to use the return method.

Section 6 Exceptions

Errors are prone to occur in our programs, in this section we learn how to identify them, what to do when they happen and how to get on from error messages.

Section 7 Lists

In this section we explore lists, lists are very flexible and allow different data types to exist in a single variable. We will explore the list class and work with examples using methods from the class.

Section 8 Dictionaries

By using dictionaries, we use a key value pair of collections, like a format. This provides extra security and is robust. We will learn about dictionaries in this section and see them with a live example.

Section 9 Working with Files

While learning how to work with files and paths, we will investigate the python operating system module. This will allow us to specify file locations, create and delete files, whilst reading and writing data to files. We will also use the Comma Separate Value (CSV) module to read data from csv files.

Section 10 Object-Oriented Programming

In this section we start with an overview of object-oriented programming, learn about classes and pythons OOP structure with several examples to fully understand its application.

Section 11 Python Programs

We put together all we have learnt in the course and build a series of programs to showcase what we can achieve. We are going to build:

I. Password Generator

II. CSV Data Manipulator

III. Trigonometry Calculator

IV. Body Mass Index Calculator

V. Simple Interest Calculator

VI. Dice Simulator

VII. Plotting Graphs from CSV Data with pandas

VIII. Creating nested folders in a directory

IX. Zip-File Extractor

X. Image Loader