Audience
This is a beginner course suitable for anyone wanting to use Python for developing applications, writing test for QA or using it for system administration.

Objectives

• To be able to write programs in Python.
• To master the rich set of Python libraries and modules.
• Understand procedural control flow in Python
• Use Object Oriented programming techniques

Course format

• Duration of the course is 24-32 academic hours. (Usually 3-4 days).
• The course includes approximately 40% hands on lab work.
• In the 4 day long version we allocate more time for exercises and have more time for individual help.
• The course can be given in either using Python 2 or Python 3

Prerequisite

• Basic programming background in either a high-level language such as C, Java or a scripting language such as Shell, VBSscript, Javascript, Perl, PHP or Ruby
• Experience with a text editor like emacs, vi, pico or notepad.
• Understanding of files and directories.

Syllabus

• Introduction to Python
• Installing Python
• Where and why to use Python
• Using the Python interactive interpreter
• Documentation and how to get help?
• Indentation
• Types and operators
• Strings
• Numbers
• Lists (arrays)
• Tuples
• Dictionaries (hashes)
• Sorting
• Functions subroutines
• Function parameters
• Positional parameters
• Named parameters
• Default values
• Optional parameters
• Return values
• Function documentation
• Lambda functions
• Control flow
• For loops
• While loops
• Loop controls
• Conditionals
• Chained comparison
• Enumerate
• Boolean and logical operators
• IO
• print
• print formatting
• read/write files
• Regular expression (pattern matching)
• Matching all
• Searching for a single match
• Meta characters
• Character classes
• Special character classes
• Quantifiers
• Alternatives
• Modifier flags
• Anchors
• Back-references
• Substitution
• The Python standard library
• Filesystem related functions
• Running external processes
• Creating modules
• Loading a module
• Finding a module in a private directory
• Changing the search path to a relative directory
• Importing selected functions
• Namespaces
• Creating executable module
• Exception handling
• Creating non-fatal warnings
• Catching exceptions
• Handling exceptions
• Throwing a new exception
• The final block
• Creating your own exception
• Object Oriented Programming
• Defining classes
• Initializing objects
• Methods
• Attributes or members
• The self
• Inheritance
• Additional uses
• Installing and using 3rd party modules
• Writing simple web scraping program
• Writing simple Web application
• Accessing SQL databases
• Reading and writing Excel files