Pythonic Python Part I: The Basics

Name: Pythonic Python Part I: The Basics
Rating: 3.4 (38 reviews)

Fast and fun python lectures for programmers, with tons of example code; plenty of exercises, and explained solutions.

(38 ratings)

527 students

Created by Marilyn Davis, Ph.D.

Last updated 2/2013

English

English [Auto]

What you'll learn

A conscientous and talented student, upon completion of the entire Pythonic Python course will be an expert in the core of Python, and in Pythonic code, bringing maximum efficiency for programmer and program alike.
A student who needs less expertise for now, and who sees this material as a smogasboard of "too much", can learn as much of Python as suits.
From this Part I, a student will become familiar in a Python development environment, deal with stdio and error handling, branching, looping, and function protocols; and be ready to use any of the thousands of Python 2 libraries.

Requirements

The Python 2 interpreter running on your computer, any operating system. The interpreter is available for free at http://python.org/download/.
A Python development environment. Perhaps your favorite environment can be made to be Python-aware. The "Idle" development environment comes into your computer when you bring in the Python interpreter. Use that if you don't already have a favorite environment.

Description

This is Pythonic Python - Part I of a complete Python course for programmers, in four parts.

The focus, besides learning Python, is learning Pythonic idioms so that your code is beautiful, easy to read and modify, and fast-running.

The Syllabus:

Part I - The Python Basics

Make yourself useful.

lab 01 Birds Eye View
lab 02 Branching and Looping
lab 03 Input and Exceptions
lab 04 Formatting Strings
lab 05 Functions
lab 06 import
lab 07 Attribute Scope
lab 08 Flexible Functions
lab 09 Sequence Slicing
lab 10 Sequence Accumulating
lab 11 Sequence Differences
lab 12 list Facilities
lab 13 Sequences And Mutability
lab 14 sys Library

Part II The Buzz

Heavy-hitting, time-saving, fun facilities.

lab 15 Reuse Trick
lab 16 list Scope Issue
lab 17 Arguments And Mutability
lab 18 list Comprehensions
lab 19 Functional Programming
lab 20 from importing
lab 21 Dictionaries
lab 22 Dictionary Marvels
lab 23 Variable Arguments Protocols
lab 24 raise An Exception
lab 25 File IO
lab 26 os Module
lab 27 Packages
lab 28 Dynamic Code
lab 29 Decorators
lab 30 Generators

Part III Pythonic OOP

So brilliant, you might need shades.

lab 31 Classes
lab 32 Containment
lab 33 Inheritance
lab 34 Multiple Inheritance
lab 35 Magical Powers
lab 36 Privacy And Introspection
lab 37 Class Attributes and Scope
lab 38 New Style Classes
lab 39 Iteration Support
lab 40 Attribute Control
lab 41 Static and Class Methods
lab 42 Context Manager

Part IV The Expert

Know it all.

lab 43 Deep Copies
lab 44 Piping With subprocess
lab 45 File Pattern globbing
lab 46 Timing Your Code
lab 47 unittest Frameworks
lab 48 Option Parsing Frameworks
lab 49 Catching Exceptions
lab 50 Raising Exceptions
lab 51 Inventing Exceptions
lab 52 Namespace Review
lab 53 Pitfalls
lab 54 Finding Modules

Who this course is for:

Software programmers who already know at least one programming language.

Marilyn Davis, Ph.D.

Python Trainer

3.4 Instructor Rating
38 Reviews
530 Students
2 Courses

Marilyn is a well-regarded Python Trainer for the Industry, and a well-loved Python Instructor for UCSC-Extension in the Silicon Valley. Her history shows her to be an accomplished software engineer as well, demonstrating a knack for finding simple solutions to complex problems, articulating clear explanations, and engendering cooperation.

Dr. Davis earned her degree from UCSD in Theoretical Radio Astronomy. In the course of that work, her interest shifted to Software Engineering. She has worked with many different computer languages, and has made software for Computer-Aided Instruction, Astronomy, Statistics, Environmental Research, Operations Research, Email Service, and Electronic Democracy.

Marilyn was an early contributor to the Open Source movement, authoring eVote/Clerk, software for consensus-building and decision-making on the network. Her PC Planetarium was sold by the Sierra Club Catalogue. Her early work in editing radio astronomy data is still in use today. Her program Basic Primer was a pioneering work in Computer-Aided Instruction and was published by IBM.

Motivated by a love for teaching, she has taught Mathematics and Physics, as well as Software Engineering. She taught C at UCSC-Extension for 14 years before she encountered Python. Python has been her focus since her first sight of Python code. She has been teaching and using Python since 2006.