Course structure

When you look at the sections and lessons, you should get a good grasp of the global structure of this course.

We start with the absolute basics, like:

• What is Python? How did it come to be?
• Installing and starting Python

Next, we’ll dive into the language itself. You’ll learn how to experiment in the so-called REPL. I’ll gradually introduce you to important concepts, like variables and strings, booleans and loops, and functions.

I’ll show you how to install and use the free Visual Studio Code IDE once we have the basics in place. This piece of software allows you to be more productive as a software developer. We’ll look at how to install it and use it to write and debug a program.

Next up is an important topic: objects and classes. Objects are the building blocks of the Python language, and classes are their blueprints. It’s essential that you learn these topics in order to properly understand Python as a language.

Another important Python concept, that is used in lots of places, is iteration. Hence it deserves a complete section to properly explain this.

Files are such a basic component of any computer and computer program, that I had to include them in this course as well. We’ll look at how to create files, open them, write to them, and do other common file operations.

Things can and will go wrong. Python has us covered here as well, with something called exceptions. In the section about exception handling, you’ll learn exactly how to deal with unforeseen problems properly.

Right at the end, we’ll look at the most important data types that Python offers us. Python’s data types, like lists and dictionaries, make it such a powerful language.

We conclude the course with a course project. In this project, we’ll build a to-do application, and many of the previously mentioned topics will come together in this part to form an actual, working application. I’ve done my best to take you through the process of developing a program. This means I won’t just throw some code at you and explain how it works, but we’ll gradually design and implement the software. Although we’ll approach this project on a small scale, much of what we do applies to how things happen in the real world.