Python: Introduction for Absolute Beginners

Prerequisites

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

This course is aimed at those new to programming and provides an introduction to programming using Python, focussing on scientific programming. This course is probably unsuitable for those with significant programming experience. By the end of this course, attendees should be able to write simple Python programs and to understand more complex Python programs written by others.

As this course is part of the Scientific Computing series, the examples chosen are of most relevance to scientific programming.

• No prior programming experience is required.
• Attendees need to ensure that they have set aside some time between sessions for attempting the exercise(s) set at the end of each session.
• Those attending should be able to use a plain text editor (e.g. emacs, gedit, pico, vi) on a Unix system as might be obtained from the Emacs or Vi introductory courses.

• Interactive and batch use of Python
• Basic concepts: variables, types, flow of control, functions
• Reading from files
• Processing input
• Writing to files
• Using external modules
• Structuring programs

Presentation

Python v. 3 on PWF Linux

• This course is probably unsuitable for those with significant programming experience.
• Please ensure you can attend all three sessions.
• Please ensure you set aside some time between sessions for attempting the exercise(s) set at the end of the previous session.
• The course notes as well as the exercises and solutions will be made available in due course.
• As this course is part of the Scientific Computing series, the examples chosen are of most relevance to scientific programming.
• Those interested in the concepts of computer programming illustrated in this course may also wish to attend the Programming Concepts for Beginners course.
• Those interested in writing more complex Python programs than those covered in this course may also be interested in the other courses in the Python series.

Three half day sessions

• Programming and Scripting
• Scientific Computing