Python for Everyone: Getting Started with Python for Non-Developers

Getting Started with Programming Basics and Python is a hands-on course that teaches students from non-development backgrounds the basics of programming and scripting, using Python. This course gently leads through programming essentials, working through the fundamentals of writing and running Python scripts to more advanced features such as file operations, regular expressions, working with binary data, and using the extensive functionality of  Python modules.

This course provides an excellent kick start for users new to Python and scripting, enabling them to use basic Python skills on the job in a variety of ways.  Students can apply the course skills to use Python in basic web development projects or automate or simplify common tasks with the use of Python scripts. The course also serves as a solid primer course / foundation for continued Python study in support for next level web development with Python, Python for data science / machine learning or Python for systems admin or networking support.

This course is about 50% hands-on lab to 50% lecture ratio, combining engaging, informed instructor presentations, demonstrations and discussions with extensive machine-based student labs and practical project work. Throughout the course students will learn to write essential Python scripts using the most current and efficient skills and techniques. 

Working within in an engaging, hands-on learning environment, guided by our expert instructor, students will learn to:

• Think like a Software Developer, including coding logic and structures
• Create working Python scripts following best practices
• Use python data types appropriately
• Read and write files with both text and binary data
• Search and replace text with regular expressions
• Get familiar with the standard library and its work-saving modules
• Create "real-world", basic level professional Python applications
• Use Python scripting basics for automating day to day tasks
• Know when to use collections such as lists, dictionaries, and sets
• Understand Pythonic features such as comprehensions and iterators
• Write robust code using exception handling

Course Agenda

1. An Overview of Software Development

• Thinking as a developer
• Pseudocode as a design tool
• Analysis – Understanding the problem
• Design – creating the solution
• Let’s Get Hands-On: Scripting and programming basics

2. An Overview of Python

• What is python?
• Python Timeline
• Advantages/Disadvantages of Python
• Getting help with pydoc

3. The Python Environment

• Starting Python
• Using the interpreter
• Running a Python script
• Python scripts on Unix/Windows
• Editors and IDEs

4. Getting Started

• Using variables
• Builtin functions
• Strings
• Numbers
• Converting among types
• Writing to the screen
• Command line parameters

5. Flow Control

• About flow control
• White space
• Conditional expressions
• Relational and Boolean operators
• While loops
• Alternate loop exits

6. Array Types

• About array types (AKA sequences)
• Lists and list methods
• Tuples
• Indexing and slicing
• Iterating through a sequence
• Nested sequences
• Sequence functions, keywords, and operators
• List comprehensions
• Generator Expressions

7. Working with Files

• File overview
• Opening a text file
• Reading a text file
• Writing to a text file

8. Dictionaries and Sets

• About dictionaries
• Creating dictionaries
• Iterating through a dictionary
• About sets
• Creating sets
• Working with sets

9. Functions

• Defining functions
• Returning values
• Parameters 
• Global and local scope

10. Sorting

• The sorted() function
• Alternate keys
• Lambda functions
• Sorting collections
• Using operator.itemgetter()
• Reverse sorting

11. Errors and Exception Handling

• Syntax errors
• Exceptions
• Using try/catch
• Handling multiple exceptions
• Ignoring exceptions

12. Modules and Packages

• The import statement
• Module search path
• Creating Modules
• Using packages
• Function and Module aliases

13. Introduction to Object Oriented Classes

• About o-o programming
• Defining classes
• Constructors
• Methods
• Instance data
• Properties
• Class methods and data