Course Details

Python programming

Course description

Python is a language with a simple syntax, and a powerful set of libraries. It is an interpreted language, with a rich programming environment, including a robust debugger and profiler. While it is easy for beginners to learn, it is widely used in many scientific areas for data exploration. This course is an introduction to the Python programming language for students without prior programming experience. We cover data types, control flow, object-oriented programming, and graphical user interface-driven applications. The examples and problems used in this course are drawn from diverse areas such as text processing, simple graphics creation and image manipulation, HTML and web programming, and genomics.

Course outline

Lesson 1: Introduction

• General Introduction to Python and the class. Using the command interpreter and development environment.
• Kick-off tutorial
• Finding and using the documentation. Getting help.
• Python 2/3 differences.

Lesson 2: gitHub, Functions, Booleans and Modules

• Introduction to git and GitHub
• Basic data types.
• Functions: definition and use, arguments, block structure, scope, recursion
• Modules and import
• Conditionals and Boolean expressions

Lesson 3: Sequences, Iteration and String Formatting

• Sequences: Strings, Tuples, Lists
• Iteration, looping and control flow.
• String methods and formatting

Lesson 4: Dictionaries, Sets, and Files

• Dictionaries, Sets and Mutability
• Files and Text Processing

Lesson 5: Exceptions, Testing, Comprehensions

• Exceptions
• Testing
• List and Dict Comprehensions

Lesson 6: Advanced Argument Passing, Lambda -- functions as objects

• Exceptions
• Testing
• List and Dict Comprehensions

Lesson 7: Object Oriented Programming

• Classes
• Class instances
• Methods

Lesson 8: More OO -- Properties, Special methods

• Multiple inheritance
• Properties
• Special methods
• Emulating built-in type

Lesson 9: Iterators, Iterables, and Generators

• Iterators and Generators

Lesson 10: Decorators, Context Managers, Regular Expressions, and Wrap Up

• Decorators
• Context Managers
• Regular expression
• Wrap Up / Students Code review