Introduction

The course is designed for beginners, including those who may have written some code before, but it is also useful for newcomers.

The material is often presented in a structured, bottom-up fashion, starting with foundational concepts and gradually building towards more complex ones.

Key areas covered in the introduction and foundational parts include:

• Running Python Programs: Learning how to execute Python code, whether by typing interactively or running code stored in files, potentially using tools like Replit. Replit provides features like a files panel for adding files and folders and built-in help for commands like print.
• Basic Syntax: Understanding Python’s general syntax model and fundamental statements, including the importance of indentation.
• Variables and Literals: Introducing how to use variables to store values and understanding different types of literals.
• Data Types and Operations: Studying Python’s built-in object types in depth.
  • Each data element has a specific data type (e.g., integer, float, string) which indicates the category it belongs to.
  • You can check the type of a variable using the type() command.
  • Specific types covered include numbers, strings, lists, dictionaries, tuples, sets, and booleans.
  • String concepts like concatenation (+), replication (*), indexing (accessing individual characters like s), and slicing (accessing substrings like s[1:3]) are introduced. The use of different types of quotes (single and double) and escape characters are also covered.
  • Operators are categorised into arithmetic, relational, and logical.
• Keywords: Understanding reserved words that have special meaning in Python, such as and, or, and not. Other keywords like break, continue, and pass are discussed in relation to control flow.
• Comments and Documentation: Learning about using comments and documentation strings (docstrings) to explain your code. The PyDoc system can extract and display these docstrings.

Moving beyond the basics, the materials cover:

• Statements and Control Flow: Exploring Python’s procedural statements, including loops (for, while) and conditional statements (if). The range function is used with for loops.
• Functions: Learning how to define and use functions to package code for reuse and avoid redundancy. This includes exploring scope rules and argument passing.
• Modules: Understanding how modules organize statements and functions into larger components, including how to create, use, and import them in different ways (import calendar, from calendar import *, from calendar import month, using as). Concepts like module packages and the __name__ variable are also introduced. Module files live within a module, and classes live within a module.
• Classes and Object-Oriented Programming (OOP): Introducing the class as Python’s main OOP tool. Classes are used to implement new kinds of objects and support inheritance.
  • A class statement creates a class object.
  • An object is a unique instance of a class. You create an instance by calling the class name like a function.
  • Functions defined within a class are called methods. The first argument in a class method is special; by convention, it’s called self and receives the instance object the method is called on.
  • The __init__ method is a special constructor method that is automatically called when a new instance is created. It’s commonly used to initialise instance attributes.
  • Operator overloading allows defining how instances of your classes interact with standard Python operators (like + or []) by implementing special methods (e.g., __init__, __getitem__).
  • Inheritance allows a new class (child) to be a modified version of an existing class (parent), inheriting its methods and attributes.
• Exceptions: Covering Python’s mechanism for handling errors and other conditions.
• File Handling: Discussing how to work with files, including reading and writing.

The learning process is supported by end-of-chapter quizzes, answers to quizzes, and end-of-part exercises. The materials also highlight common coding mistakes or “gotchas” to help you avoid them.

Overall, while covering core concepts in depth, the focus is on teaching the Python language itself rather than specific application areas like web development or graphical user interfaces, although these may be briefly mentioned as possibilities after mastering the core language. Some advanced topics may be considered optional reading.