Python From Zero to Automation

Learn basic Python syntax, focusing on whitespace and indentation to structure code, use of comments, string literals, and line continuation, and understand identifiers and keywords with practical examples.

Discover how Python variables act as labels that hold values and can change, assign with =, print results, and name variables with letters, numbers, and underscores.

Master Python strings by using single or double quotes, escaping, raw and multi-line strings, f-strings, concatenation, indexing, slicing, length with len, and immutability.

Explore Python's number types—integers and floats—and arithmetic operations. Use the VS Code Python extension and Repl to test expressions and see that division yields floats.

Learn how the boolean data type represents true and false in Python, use the bool function to test values, and recognize truthy and falsy values like zero and empty string.

Learn how to define Python constants by convention using all-capital names to signal values that should not change, even though Python has no true constants.

Learn to use Python comments to document code with block and inline comments, plus docstrings. See how docstrings expose runtime information and support one-line and multiline examples.

Learn Python comparison operators using six operators—less than, less than or equal to, greater than, greater than or equal to, equal, and not equal—yielding booleans for numbers and strings.

Explore Python logical operators, and, or, and not, and learn how to combine multiple conditions with practical examples using a price variable.

Learn how Python applies precedence to logical operators, with not high precedence, and medium for and, and low for or, and how parentheses group operands and evaluate left to right.

Learn to use the Python if statement to execute code based on a condition, using input and int for an age check and voting eligibility.

Master the python if-else statement, using true and false conditions with an else block, a flowchart guide, and an age-check example in Visual Studio Code.

Explore how to check multiple conditions using the if-elif-else construct, evaluate conditions in order, and use an optional else to handle all other cases, illustrated with age-based ticket pricing.

Learn how to use Python's ternary operator to concisely express age-based conditionals, replacing if-else blocks with a one-line form, illustrated by a ticket price example.

Master the Python for loop to run code blocks a fixed number of times using range, with a loop counter and start, stop, and step examples 0-4 and 1-5.

Learn how the Python while statement implements a pre-test loop that runs a block while a condition is true, with a 0–4 counter example and a case-insensitive exit on kit.

Master the Python break statement to exit for and while loops prematurely, including nested loops, with practical examples using range, conditions, and a quit prompt.

Learn how the Python continue statement controls loops by skipping iterations in for and while loops, with examples printing even numbers and odd numbers via modulus.

Learn how to use the Python pass statement as a placeholder to avoid syntax errors, enabling future implementation in if, for, while, function, and class blocks.

Learn how to define and use functions in Python, including def syntax, parameters, and return values, and see how functions improve code readability and reuse.

Learn how to define default values for function parameters in Python, using the syntax param=value, and why non-default parameters must precede defaults, with keyword arguments to resolve calls.

Learn how Python keyword arguments improve function call readability in net price calculations using price and discount, and explore mixing positional and keyword arguments with default parameters and tax.

Explore Python recursive functions, how they call themselves, why a base condition stops recursion, and how recursion helps with data structures like trees, graphs, and binary search.

Explore Python lambda expressions to write anonymous single-expression functions, using them as formatters for full names and to return functions like times to create doubles and triples.

Learn how to create and manipulate Python lists using square brackets, indexes (including negative), and operations like append, insert, del, pop, and remove, with examples of numbers, colors, and coordinates.

Explore Python tuples, immutable lists defined with parentheses, with an RGB example and index-based access. Understand immutability, single-element trailing comma, and reassigning a new tuple to the same variable.

This lecture teaches the list sort method, which sorts the list in place by default, supports reverse, and demonstrates sorting strings, numbers, and tuples with a sort key or lambda.

Learn how the sorted function returns a new sorted list from a given list without modifying the original, supports reverse order, and works with strings and numbers.

Learn how to use Python list slice to obtain sublists, modify and resize lists, and delete elements with the del keyword using begin, end, and step indices.

Master list and tuple element assignment with sequence unpacking, using a colors list to map red, blue, and green and pack the remaining items into the other variable.

Master iterating over lists in Python with a for loop, accessing items and their indexes via enumerate, and setting a custom starting index.

Use the index function to find a list element's position, and apply the in operator to avoid errors when the element is absent, as shown with Mumbai, Osaka, and Cairo.

Learn the difference between iterables and iterators in Python, with range, strings, lists, and tuples; use iter and next to traverse, and understand stop iteration.

Use the map function to transform list elements instead of for loops, applying a function or lambda to lists and tuples, and convert the resulting iterator back to a list.

Learn to filter list elements in Python using the filter function and lambda, and compare it with a for loop. Filter scores and country populations, then print results.

Use Python's reduce from functools to collapse a list into a single value, demonstrated by summing a scores list and achieving 365 with a concise lambda-based approach.

Learn how to create new lists from existing ones in Python using list comprehensions, and compare for loops, map, and filter while applying an optional if condition to filter elements.

Explore string manipulation in Python by recalling string basics, concatenation with the plus operator, extracting substrings, trimming spaces, changing case, and using quotes and escape characters in strings.

Explore escape characters in Python, using backslashes to include quotes and special symbols in strings. Learn to manage syntax errors when quoting inside strings and print newline and tab characters.

Learn how to declare raw strings in Python by prefixing with R, which disables escape processing and prints backslashes literally, enabling easy handling of Windows file paths.

Learn to create multi-line strings in Python with triple quotes, using backslash n for new lines, and note indentation is ignored while quotes escaping is optional.

Apply the in and not in operators to test string membership in Python, noting case-sensitive results with examples like hello in hello world and not in cats.

Learn how to convert strings to upper or lower case with Python's upper and lower methods, which return new strings without altering the original, and perform case-insensitive comparisons using lower.

Learn how python's isX() string methods return boolean results to validate input. Use isalpha, isalnum, isdecimal, isspace, and istitle with practical examples and simple loops.

Learn how the Python startswith and endswith methods check a string’s beginning or end against a substring, returning true or false, as alternatives to the equals operator.

Learn how to join strings with Python's join method and split strings with the split method, including default whitespace and custom delimiters, and handle multi-line strings.

Explore how to justify text using right justify, left justify, and center methods that pad strings to a desired length, with optional fill characters and spaces for neat tabular data.

Remove whitespace with strip, lstrip, and rstrip methods. Learn to strip left, right, or both sides with the optional argument, and note the order of the characters does not matter.

Learn how Python dictionaries store key-value pairs, manipulate entries with add, get (with defaults), modify, and delete, and iterate using items, keys, and values while preserving insertion order.

Learn to create new dictionaries with dictionary comprehension, transforming or filtering items from an existing dictionary using for key, value in dict.items() and an optional if condition.

Master the Python set type, an unordered collection of unique, immutable elements with duplicates removed; learn to define sets with braces or set(), and check membership with in.

Use Python set comprehension to create a new set from existing set by applying an expression to each element, with an optional if clause to filter, returning a new set.

Learn to union sets with Python set union method or union operator to obtain a distinct set; method accepts iterables as lists and tuples, while the operator uses only sets.

Understand how set intersection yields common elements with the intersection method and the ampersand operator. See examples with Python, Java, and C++, and note iterables vs. sets.

Explore set difference by comparing two sets to yield elements in the first set not in the second, using the difference method or the minus operator, with Python examples.

Learn how to compute the symmetric difference between two or more sets in Python, using the difference method or the intersection operator, and see examples with Python, Java, and C#.

learn how to use python's is subset method to check if one set is a subset of another, and compare with the less than or equal operator in code examples.

Learn how to use Python's superset method and the greater-or-equal operator to check if one set contains another, with numbers and scores as examples.

Learn to check if sets are disjoint using the Python is disjoint method, which accepts any iterable by converting it to a set and returns true when intersection is empty.

Learn to handle errors gracefully in Python by using try...except blocks, catching specific exceptions like ValueError and ZeroDivisionError, and providing user friendly messages.

Learn how Python's try, except, and finally blocks handle exceptions, with example code for division by zero, cleanup in finally, and flowcharts illustrating control flow.

Explore how try, except, else, and finally control the program flow during exceptions in Python, with examples of division by zero, dictionary key lookups, and handling keyboard interrupts.