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Course Fee: $395

This course is limited to a class size of 15 in order to ensure every participant is able to receive personalized, hands-on instruction. 

Class Schedule:

Saturday, March 8, 10AM-2PM

Saturday, March 15, 10AM-2PM

Saturday, March 29, 10AM-2PM

Saturday, April 5, 10AM-2PM

You will need to bring your own laptop for these classes. You do not have to have Python installed as the instructor will guide you in the proper installation during the first class.

By purchasing this course, you understand that refunds for the course fee are only available if a request is made directly after or during the first class. Once the attendee has attended and left the first class, the course fee becomes non-refundable.

Intended Audience

Attendees should have a basic understanding of computers (opening a file, running a program, connecting to Wi-Fi networks, etc.). Attendees are required to bring their own computer to follow along with examples, as there will be a significant portion of the course that will be hands-on. Windows, Mac, and Linux are all supported Operating Systems for this course. No previous programming experience is needed.

Description

It's remarkable as to how digital today's world has become. For decades, our society has seen computers integrate more and more with our lives? But how do computers work? How can somebody program a computer to do exactly what you want it to do?

This course will teach you how you can write programs of your own. We'll be using the Python programming language, which is incredibly beginner-friendly, but still powerful enough to be used in businesses around the world. You'll write command-line programs, graphical user interfaces, and web pages all with the power of Python.

Course Goals

By the end of this course, you will understand how programs interact with a computer. You'll be able to write Python programs to interact with files and do basic computation. You'll have a basic understanding of Python programs and be able to read most procedural code. You will be able to write Python scripts, utility programs, and graphical applications

Every class will be hands-on; there will be multiple short presentations in each class, each followed by demonstrations, follow-along work, and time for individual questions and help. You'll go through various exercises as well as given challenge problems that will reinforce your Python understanding. The best way to learn is by doing, after all.

Course Breakdown

4-Week Course Breakdown (3 hours per week)

Week 1 - Introduction to Python

In this class, you'll learn what Python is, how to use it, and the basic tenets of programming. You'll create your own programs to run utilities, computations, and games through a command line. You'll learn about program output, querying the user for input, conditional branches, and loops. By the end of the class, you'll be able to write your own Python scripts to perform helper tasks on your computer.

Week 2 - Organizing Data with Python

In this class, you'll dive deeper into Python by learning about all how to store and manipulate collections of data. You'll work with lists (sequential data) and dictionaries (associative lookups), and learn the difference between the two. You'll also learn about functions, which will help you reuse and modularize your code. We'll end the session with a discussion of general problem solving, which will help you write and troubleshoot your programs. By the end of the course, you should be introduced to data manipulation, functions and debugging.

Week 3 - Files, Exceptions, and Classes

In this class, you'll learn how to read from and write to files so that your programs can store knowledge. This will let you interact with a wide variety of sources of information on your computer and allow you to start building persistent applications. You'll also dive into error handling with exceptions, a common paradigm in Python. The class finishes with a description of classes, which are great for organizing data and related functionality, which greatly improves the readability of your code. By the end of the class, you'll be able to interact with your filesystem, better organize your code, and have robust error handling.

Week 4 - GUI programming

In this class, you'll start learning how to build Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) in Python using the tkinter package. You'll create windows, buttons and other controls that will give you a much more user-friendly way of interacting with Python programs. You'll learn how to wrap existing Python projects with a graphical front. By the end of the class, you'll be able to write your own GUIs for Python projects with full interactivity.

The instructor for this course will be Pat Viafore

Pat has been programming professionally since 2007 and has worked on a wide range of technologies. He has worked on embedded telecommunications hardware, lightning tracking systems, the Ubuntu operating system, and desktop virtualization. He holds a master's in computer science and loves teaching computer science and software engineering fundamentals to others. He is the organizer of HSV.py, Huntsville's local Python Meetup group and is the author of Robust Python. He also runs a software consultancy, Kudzera LLC, to help small businesses with website development and other software-related tasks.