Working with Python - Introductory Level

Learn to think like a computer scientist with of one of the world's most popular programming languages

Python is one of the world's most popular programming languages, and with good reason: it is extremely flexible, easy to learn, and runs on a wide variety of devices and platforms. In fact, Python recently moved to first place in the TIOBE programming community index, which is a remarkable achievement.

This course is an introduction to Python, version 3.10. Unlike many introductory courses, we will not spend hours surveying the basics of the language; personally, I see no point in doing that, since there are already many, many free resources online that do precisely that. Instead, we'll learn the language in the way that I have long preferred: we'll actually build something.

The bulk of this course will be focused on building a simple text adventure game, where the player explores a labyrinth, encounters monsters, engages in combat, finds items, and that sort of thing. It's a bit of a throwback to the early days of computer games, but the important thing here is not the quality of the game that we'll build, but rather that we'll cover all of the things you need to get started programming in Python, including:

• Python's primitive data types: integer, float, string, and boolean

• Python's aggregate data types: tuple, set, dictionary and list

• How to make decisions in Python: if/elif/else

• How to loop in Python: for and while loops

• How to write functions

• How to import from the standard library, and third party packages

• How to structure a Python program

• How to perform mathematical operations in Python

• How to manipulate strings in Python

• How to work with classes in Python

And, as the saying goes, much more. Periodically, I'll include "aside" lectures, which focus on a particular aspect of Python in more detail, with simple code examples that are not part of the main project.

This course requires no previous programming experience.