Introduction to Programming: Python

In this course, students will learn elementary programming concepts with the Python (3) language, with an additional section studying Java and the relation between the two languages. Learning Python will allow students to develop the basic skills for functional and object-oriented programming and the fundamentals of polymorphism and imperative programming, as well as a short study on regular expressions. Students can use this knowledge to take on learning other higher-level languages such as C++, Swift, and C# (as well as scripting and scientific languages such as Octave, R, Julia, and Ruby) in an accelerated manner. The class will focus on building programming skills from fundamental keywords to high-level abstraction, in hopes that the student will then continue on to learn a high-level programming language afterward.

Students will learn the following aspects of programming using the Python language:

Section 1:

-Introduction, how to succeed in the course, setup

-What is Python, understanding programming

-Hello World and ‘__main__’

-Input and Output, Commenting and Docstrings

-Data Types, Arithmetic and Assignment Operators, Numerical Operations

-Strings and String Operations, ASCII

-String Formatting

-Type Conversion, In-Place and Walrus Operators

Section 2:

-PEP and The Zen of Python

-Boolean Expressions and Conditional Statements

-Chained and Nested Conditions

-Logic Operators

-Loops: for, while, ‘range’, ‘in’

-Functions

-Recursion

-The Standard Library and pip

Section 3:

-Lists and List Functions

-List Slices and Matrices

-Dictionaries and Dictionary Functions

-Tuples and Tuple Unpacking

-The ‘itertools’ Library

-Sets and Set Functions

Section 4:

-Random Numbers, Math and Data Science Functions

-Exceptions and Raising Exceptions

-Exception Handling, ‘finally’

-Assertions

-File I/O

-List Comprehensions and Ternary Operator

Section 5 – Regular Expressions:

-Character Matching

-Data Extraction, Combining Searching and Extracting

-The Escape Character and grep

Section 6 – Objected-Oriented Programming:

-Classes

-Properties and Modules

-Data Hiding and Dunder/Magic Methods

-Inheritance

-Class Methods and Static Methods

-Making a basic GUI with Tkinter

Section 7 – Functional Programming:

-Intro to Functional Programming, First-Class Functions

-Anonymous Functions and Lambda Expressions

-Iterators, Generators, and Decorators

-Higher-Order Functions, ‘map’ and ‘filter’

-Using ‘reduce’

-Advanced Function Arguments (‘*args’, ‘**kwargs’)

Section 8 – Capstone:

-Final exam

-Capstone project

Optional textbooks:

-“Practical Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python 3” by Paul Gries, Jennifer Campbell, and Jason Montojo (Various prices by format and rental, very cheap on Amazon)

-“Python for Everybody: Exploring Data in Python 3” by Charles Severance (Various prices by format and rental, very cheap on Amazon)

-“Python Crash Course, 2nd Edition: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming, 2nd Edition” by Eric Matthes (Various prices by format)

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Frequently Asked Questions

How long do I have access to the course materials?

You can view and review the lecture materials indefinitely, like an on-demand channel.

Can I take my courses with me wherever I go?

Definitely! If you have an internet connection, courses on Udemy are available on any device at any time. If you don’t have an internet connection, some instructors also let their students download course lectures. That’s up to the instructor though, so make sure you get on their good side!