Python Programming - 4 days online classroom

Course timeline

1. Day 1

   Session 1: Getting Started

   • Introduction to Python, versions and documentation
   • Understanding runtime environments and Python installation
   • Working with the REPL shell and Python editors

   Session 2: Python Scripts & Syntax

   • Script naming conventions, comments and docstrings
   • Python statements, code blocks and whitespace
   • Console input/output and creating your first Python program
   • Running and executing Python scripts

   Session 3: Variables & Data Types

   • Working with literals, identifiers and assignments
   • Understanding numeric and collection data types
   • Binary, octal and hexadecimal values
   • Type conversion and using the type() function

   Session 4: Operators & Expressions

   • Arithmetic, assignment and comparison operators
   • Logical, membership and identity operators
   • Introduction to bitwise operators

   Session 5: Conditions & Loops

   • Using if, elif and else statements
   • Nested and shorthand conditional statements
   • Working with while and for loops
   • Using range(), list iteration, break and continue statements

2. Day 2

   Session 6: Functions

   • Declaring and invoking functions
   • Using default parameters and named arguments
   • Working with args and kwargs
   • Returning multiple values and understanding None
   • Variable scope, masking and shadowing
   • Using the pass keyword and recursive functions

   Session 7: Objects and Classes

   • Introduction to objects and attributes
   • Using dot notation, dir() and dunder attributes
   • Understanding mutability, references and the id() function
   • Creating classes, objects and methods
   • Working with data attributes and composition

   Session 8: Lists

   • Understanding list syntax and slicing
   • Getting, setting and iterating through list elements
   • Checking values and using the len() function
   • Using common list methods such as append(), insert(), remove() and sort()
   • Combining lists and working with list comprehensions

   Session 9: Tuples

   • Introduction to tuples and tuple syntax
   • Accessing and unpacking tuple elements
   • Iterating through tuples and membership testing
   • Using the len() function and combining tuples

   Session 10: Sets

   • Understanding sets and set syntax
   • Adding, removing and iterating through set elements
   • Membership testing, sorting and copying sets
   • Working with set operations including union, intersection, difference and symmetric difference

3. Day 3

   Session 11: DICTIONARIES

   • About dictionaries
   • Dictionary syntax
   • Getting and setting dictionary elements
   • Iterating over a dictionary (keys, values, and items)
   • Checking for the presence of a key
   • The len function
   • Dictionary methods incl. keys, values, items, get, pop, popitem, clear etc.
   • The del keyword
   • Dictionary comprehension

   Session 12: STRING

   • About strings
   • String syntax including slicing
   • Escape characters
   • Triple-quoted strings
   • Concatenation
   • Placeholders
   • The format method
   • Other methods e.g. endswith, find, join, lower, replace, split, startswith, strip, upper etc.
   • A string as a list of bytes

   Session 13: MODULES & PACKAGES

   • About modules
   • Inbuilt modules math, random and platform
   • the dir() and help() functions
   • Creating and using modules
   • the __pycache__ and the .pyc files
   • The module search path
   • Importing modules
   • Namespaces
   • Importing module objects
   • The import wildcard
   • Aliases
   • Importing within a function
   • Executable modules
   • Reloading a module
   • About packages
   • Importing packaged modules
   • Importing packaged module objects
   • Package initialisation
   • Subpackages
   • Referencing objects in sibling packages
   • The Standard Library
   • Installing modules and packages using pip

   Session 14: PATTERN MATCHING

   • About regular expressions
   • Regular expression special characters
   • Raw strings
   • About the re module
   • re module functions incl. match, search, findall, full match, split, sub

4. Day 4

   Session 15: Exception Handling

   • Introduction to exceptions and error handling
   • Using try, except, else and finally blocks
   • Understanding exception types and exception objects
   • Raising exceptions and creating custom exception classes
   • Exploring Python’s built-in exception hierarchy

   Session 16: Files & the Filesystem

   • Opening, reading and writing files in Python
   • Working with file navigation and iteration methods
   • Using context managers for file handling
   • Understanding text encoding, ASCII and Unicode
   • Working with binary data, bytes and bytearrays
   • Using the os module for filesystem operations such as creating, removing and navigating directories
   • Handling file-related errors with OSError and the errno module

   Session 17: Databases

   • Introduction to Python DB-API and database implementations
   • Establishing database connections and creating cursors
   • Executing queries and fetching results
   • Managing transactions
   • Inserting, updating and deleting database records