Python Training Course

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Course Summary

Python Fundamentals is a 4-day training course in the Python language and its many applications. The course covers the language itself, explains object-oriented as well as functional programming techniques, error handling, packaging, system and network programming, many of the Python extensions (libraries), as well as best practices. All concepts are explained through hands-on examples and exercises, so students learn by coding in Python.

Duration

4 days.

Objectives

Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:

Develop complex programs in Python
Understand the best use-case applications for Python
Use Python's modules for text and XML processing, networking, system process control, database/LDAP/HTTP communication, etc.
Design your code in both object-oriented and procedural fashion using best practices
Handle errors in Python
Write lean Python code

Audience

This course is designed for programmers who need to develop software in Python as well as system administrators who wish to take advantage of Python's simple scripting abilities to automate back-end tasks.

Students should have some prior programming experience and be familiar with basic concepts such as variables/scopes, flow-control, functions, modularization, error handling, TCP/IP networking, and so forth.

Familiarity with object-oriented programming language (such as Java or C++) and/or scripting languages (such as Perl or Bash shell scripting) can be helpful.

Additional Notes

About Your Instructor

Marilyn Davis earned a Ph.D. in Radio Astronomy, and M.A. in Applied Physics, from UCSD; and a B.S. and M.S. in Mathematics from Denver University. Computer programming captured her imagination and she has made significant contributions in scientific, statistical, operations research, test-development and groupware applications. Teaching has always been a favorite activity. She has been teaching C Programming at UCSC-Extension for 15 years. When she met Python, for 5 years.

Marilyn specializes in Python training, she has taught Python for Google, Nokia, Cisco, VMware and more. Even the marketing department at Google took a class.

After teaching C for 14 years, Marilyn met Python and immediately recognized this new language as a big boon to software engineering. Engineers typically claim a 9-fold increase in productivity over C/C++ with significant improvements in readability and reliability.

Marilyn's Talk on Why Python

This text will be replaced

Marilyn's Google Tech Talk

Some Python Integrated Development Environments: Video of Marilyn Davis' discussion on Emacs at the Bay Area Python Interest Group.

About the Platform

This course can be taught on most major operating systems, which support Python, such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, etc.

Trademarks

"Python" is a registered trademark of the Python Software Foundation. All other marks are the properties of their respective owners.

Outline

Output

Executing a Python program
Syntax: code blocks, colons
if, elif and else
while and another else
Writing to stdout
Relational and logical operators

Input

Input from stdin
Factory functions
Catching an exception:
- yet another else
Formatted strings
Integer division issue

for range

range operator
for loop
tuples

Functions

Function protocols
import and reload
Module: random
Introspection

Scope

Indentifier scope
Default arguments
Keyword arguments

Sequences

Sequence types: str, tuple, list
Sequence slicing and other manipulations

Important Trick

Module: sys
Important trick:
- _name_and_'_main_'
Valid identifiers

Comprehensions

Scope issues
List comprehensions

Dictionaries

Importing with from
Dictionaries

File IO

File I/O
Module: os
Walking A Directory

Packages

Modules: shutil, tempfile
Python Packages
Debugging

Dynamic Code

Dynamic Code Generation
Modules:
- subprocess
- glob
- profile

Function Fancies

Function protocols: variable length argument lists
Formatted printing using a dictionary for replacement
Unpacking sequences and dictionaries
Generators (Optional)
Decorators (Optional)

OOP

Module: shelve
Classes
Inheritance
Class variable

Overriding

Overriding
Has-A vs Is-A relationships

New Style Classes

Useful attributes
Iterators
New style classes
Attribute control (Optional)
property (Optional)
Static methods (Optional)
Class methods (Optional)
Diamond inheritance (Optional)

Developer Modules

Context Manager class
Module: unittest
Module: optparse

Wrap Up

Exceptions
Namespaces
Nests
Pitfalls
Finding Modules and Help

re Module

re - Regular Expressions
Search and replace
Named groups

re Syntax

Regular expression syntax
Testing regular expressions