About This Course

The main goal of the course is to guide you from a state of complete programming illiteracy to a level of programming knowledge which allows you to design, write, debug, and run programs encoded in the Python language, and to understand the basic concepts of software development technology.
The courses’ added value is to create and develop an ability to analyze common problems in an algorithmic sense, and to see them as an input for computer processing. Moreover, some basic network programming techniques are presented, opening the path to the world of the Internet-Of-Things.

Course Duration

60 Hrs.

At course completion

After completing this course, students will be able to:

Design, write, debug, and run programs encoded in the Python language, and to understand the basic concepts of software development technology

Create and develop an ability to analyze common problems in an algorithmic sense, and to see them as an input for computer processing.

Course Outline

Module #1: Control and Evaluations

• basic concepts: interpreting and the interpreter, compilation and the compiler, language elements, lexis, syntax and semantics, Python keywords, instructions, indenting
• literals: Boolean, integer, floating-point numbers, scientific notation, strings
• operators: unary and binary, priorities and binding
• numeric operators: ** * / % // + –
• bitwise operators: ~ & ^ | << >>
• string operators: * +
• Boolean operators: not and or
• relational operators ( == != > >= < <= ), building complex Boolean expressions
• assignments and shortcut operators
• accuracy of floating-point numbers
• basic input and output: input(), print(), int(), float(), str() functions
• formatting print() output with end= and sep= arguments
• conditional statements: if, if-else, if-elif, if-elif-else
• the pass instruction
• simple lists: constructing vectors, indexing and slicing, the len() function
• simple strings: constructing, assigning, indexing, slicing comparing, immutability
• building loops: while, for, range(), in, iterating through sequences
• expanding loops: while-else, for-else, nesting loops and conditional statements
• controlling loop execution: break, continue

Module #2: Data Aggregates

• strings in detail: ASCII, UNICODE, UTF-8, immutability, escaping using the \ character, quotes and apostrophes inside strings, multiline strings, copying vs. cloning, advanced slicing, string vs. string, string vs. non-string, basic string methods (upper(), lower(), isxxx(), capitalize(), split(), join(), etc.) and functions (len(), chr(), ord()), escape characters
• lists in detail: indexing, slicing, basic methods (append(), insert(), index()) and functions (len(), sorted(), etc.), del instruction, iterating lists with the for loop, initializing, in and not in operators, list comprehension, copying and cloning
• lists in lists: matrices and cubes
• tuples: indexing, slicing, building, immutability
• tuples vs. lists: similarities and differences, lists inside tuples and tuples inside lists
• dictionaries: building, indexing, adding and removing keys, iterating through dictionaries as well as their keys and values, checking key existence, keys(), items() and values() methods

Module #3: Functions and Modules

• defining and invoking your own functions and generators
• return and yield keywords, returning results, the None keyword, recursion
• parameters vs. arguments, positional keyword and mixed argument passing, default parameter values
• converting generator objects into lists using the list() function
• name scopes, name hiding (shadowing), the global keyword
• lambda functions, defining and using
• map(), filter(), reduce(), reversed(), sorted() functions and the sort() method
• the if operator
• import directives, qualifying entities with module names, initializing modules
• writing and using modules, the __name__ variable
• pyc file creation and usage
• constructing and distributing packages, packages vs. directories, the role of the __init__.py file
• hiding module entities
• Python hashbangs, using multiline strings as module documentation

Module #4: Classes, Objects, and Exceptions

• defining your own classes, superclasses, subclasses, inheritance, searching for missing class components, creating objects
• class attributes: class variables and instance variables, defining, adding and removing attributes, explicit constructor invocation
• class methods: defining and using, the self parameter meaning and usage
• inheritance and overriding, finding class/object components
• single inheritance vs. multiple inheritance
• name mangling
• invoking methods, passing and using the self argument/parameter
• the __init__ method
• the role of the __str__ method
• introspection: __dict__, __name__, __module__, __bases__ properties, examining class/object structure
• writing and using constructors
• hasattr(), type(), issubclass(), isinstance(), super() functions
• using predefined exceptions and defining your own ones
• the try-except-else-finally block, the raise statement, the except-as variant
• exceptions hierarchy, assigning more than one exception to one except branch
• adding your own exceptions to an existing hierarchy
• assertions
• the anatomy of an exception object
• input/output basics: opening files with the open() function, stream objects, binary vs. text files, newline character translation, reading and writing files, bytearray objects read(), readinto(), readline(), write(), close() methods