A Python Tale • A Relaxed Programming Course for Beginners

Course Curriculum

Chapter 1: The Tale Starts Here

Lecture 1: Let's Make a Start

Lecture 2: What's Coding? Here's My View…

Lecture 3: Installing Python and Other Tools

Lecture 4: Finding The Goblin • Introduction to the project

Lecture 5: Talk To Me • `print()`, `input()`, and strings

Lecture 6: Store This In A Box • Variables

Lecture 7: Sticking Strings Together • Concatenation

Lecture 8: Deciding What To Do • `if` statements

Lecture 9: Squashing Your First Bug

Lecture 10: On and on • `while` loop

Lecture 11: On and on but not forever • more `while` loop

Lecture 12: Fetching more Python stuff • Importing modules

Lecture 13: Finishing Touches

Lecture 14: A bit extra: More on `if` statements

Lecture 15: Final word

Lecture 16: Exercises for Section 1

Chapter 2: Loops, Lists and Other Stories

Lecture 1: Where Are We in This Tale?

Lecture 2: Meet Monty (Introduction to the central analogy in A Python Tale)

Lecture 3: Monty Starts His Adventures

Lecture 4: Is It DRY? (`for` loops)

Lecture 5: More On The `for` Loop

Lecture 6: Revisiting The `while` Loop (Comparing `for` and `while`)

Lecture 7: Indents Are Not Just Decorative

Lecture 8: Storing Several Items in One Box (Lists)

Lecture 9: Finding Things in The Box (Indexing and slicing)

Lecture 10: More Slicing

Lecture 11: And One More List Fact

Lecture 12: Looping Through Lists

Lecture 13: Final Word

Lecture 14: Who am I? (If you care…)

Lecture 15: Exercises for Section 2

Chapter 3: Choosing a Baby Name • Functions

Lecture 1: The Road We've Already Travelled

Lecture 2: The Baby Name Project • Introducing the project

Lecture 3: First, Solve The Problem. Then, Write The Code

Lecture 4: Accessing Files You'll Need • Adding them to the Python project

Lecture 5: The First Iteration • Getting started

Lecture 6: Indexing Revisited

Lecture 7: Back To The First Iteration

Lecture 8: Repeating Our Code For All The Names

Lecture 9: Adding Names To An Empty List • Introduction to methods

Lecture 10: I Want To Reuse This Code • Defining functions

Lecture 11: Monty and The Function Room

Lecture 12: Local Variables and Returning Data • return statement

Lecture 13: Calling The Function

Lecture 14: Making The Function More Flexible • Parameters and arguments (Part 1)

Lecture 15: Making The Function More Flexible • Parameters and arguments (Part 2)

Lecture 16: Defining Another Function

Lecture 17: More Parameters, More Arguments

Lecture 18: Revisiting Monty and The Function Room

Lecture 19: Monty's Complaints • Error messages when calling functions

Lecture 20: Final Word

Lecture 21: Exercises for Section 3

Chapter 4: Pride & Prejudice • Data, Data Types and Data Structures

Lecture 1: Data, Data, and Data • Chapter overview

Lecture 2: Subject-Specific and Programming-Specific Knowledge

Lecture 3: Some Data Type Categories • Iterables and Sequences

Lecture 4: Some Data Type Categories • Mutable and Immutable

Lecture 5: What Can This Data Do? • Methods associated with data types

Lecture 6: Revisiting Mutable and Immutable Data Types

Lecture 7: More Ways of Storing Stuff • Data Structures

Lecture 8: Single, Double, Triple, Quadruple… Tuple

Lecture 9: The Python Dictionary (not that type of dictionary, no)

Lecture 10: And A Bit More About Dictionaries

Lecture 11: Pride & Prejudice • Introducing the new project • Reading from a text file

Lecture 12: Splitting The Text Into Words

Lecture 13: Cleaning Required • Cleaning the data (Part 1)

Lecture 14: Cleaning Required • Cleaning the data (Part 2)

Lecture 15: What Are The Most Common Words Jane Austen Used?

Lecture 16: Reviewing The Algorithm

Lecture 17: Share Your Results • Writing results to a spreadsheet

Lecture 18: Looping Through Dictionaries

Lecture 19: Back To Exporting To A Spreadsheet

Lecture 20: Some Extras…

Lecture 21: Final Word

Lecture 22: Exercises for Chapter 4

Chapter 5: Epilogue: Monty and The White Room (plus an extra project)

Lecture 1: What's In This Epilogue

Lecture 2: Bouncing a Ball • Introduction to the project

Lecture 3: Create a Ball • The `turtle` module

Lecture 4: A Very Brief `turtle` Primer

Lecture 5: Drop the Ball

Lecture 6: Now Add Gravity

Lecture 7: Controlling When Things Are Displayed On Your Screen

Lecture 8: Bounce The Ball

Lecture 9: Bounce The Ball (properly)

Lecture 10: Throw The Ball Sideways

Lecture 11: Don't Forget The Walls

Lecture 12: Finishing Touches

Lecture 13: Monty and The White Room • The main room

Lecture 14: Monty and The White Room • The function room

Lecture 15: Monty and The White Room • Python City

Lecture 16: The Final Final Word (for this course!)