A Gentle Introduction to Python Programming

Learn fundamental Python programming concepts from variables and data types to control flow. Build simple command line programs using a text editor.

Install Python from python.org and set up Python 3 on your computer, add Python to the path on Windows, and use the interactive interpreter to run hello world.

Explore Python numbers with the interactive interpreter, performing arithmetic on integers and floats and observing automatic casting. Learn float() and int() casting, and practice //, **, and % operations.

Understand variables as containers, how assignment declares them, and Python's naming rules and reserved keywords, then apply order of operations with parentheses and exponents to calculate area and polynomials.

Learn how to declare Python strings with single or double quotes, handle quotes with escape characters and backslashes, and use triple and raw strings for multi-line and Windows path literals.

Explore how to concatenate strings, cast numbers to strings, repeat strings, test membership with in, and master indexing, length, and slicing with zero-based and negative indices.

Explore how Python string methods such as index, find, isdigit, lower, upper, replace, and strip (including lstrip and rstrip) manipulate strings, returning new values and handling not found cases.

Learn Python string methods, including split with whitespace or custom delimiters, and startswith/endswith. Master string formatting with % placeholders for strings, integers, and floats, and control of decimal precision.

Explore booleans in Python by declaring true or false, representing on/off or 0/1, and applying not, and, or, as well as equality and comparison operators on numbers, strings, and booleans.

Discover tuples in Python, a complex data type for aggregating values of mixed types, and master indexing, slicing with negative indices, concatenation, repetition, and membership testing.

Learn how Python lists work, create with square brackets, store mixed types, and use mutability with methods like append, extend, insert, remove, pop, sort, reverse, and indexing and slicing.

Explore dictionary basics in python by mapping names to ages, updating entries, handling missing keys with get and set default, and removing or merging via del, pop, and update.

Explore how Python treats all data as objects, using id and is to distinguish identity from equality, and compare mutable versus immutable types and singletons.

Learn to use the Python if statement to test conditions. Include equality versus assignment, booleans, indentation, elif and else branches, and prints while writing to a file.

Explore Python's if statements with multiple variables, learn truthiness rules for numbers, strings, lists, and tuples, and use short-circuit booleans to write concise conditional code.

Learn how for loops iterate over sequences like lists, strings, and dictionaries, use range and enumerate for indexing, and convert split strings to integers to sum numbers.

Learn to use the while loop to repeat code until a condition becomes false, using an incremented x example and user input. Explore break, continue, and contrast with for loops.

Define functions with def, name parameters, and return results for reuse. Explore named and default arguments and avoid mutable-default traps by creating new objects within the function.

Continue exploring functions in Python, showing how to pass arbitrary arguments with *args and **kwargs, unpack sequences and dictionaries, and customize built-in behavior like print while keeping it simple.

Explore Python exceptions, including value errors and index errors, and master handling them with try-except-finally to control program flow and handle errors.

Explore using multiple except statements to catch a value error and a keyboard interrupt. Learn to read the exception object, observe finally blocks, and raise custom messages that propagate errors.

Calculate the volume of a rectangular box in Python by prompting for length, width, and height, with input validation and graceful error handling.

Learn to write a Python program that sums multiples up to 1000 for a user-provided list of positive integers, with input validation and error handling.

Read two positive integers as width and height to generate a formatted, aligned multiplication table. Use nested loops with dynamic padding from the product and validate input with error handling.