Introduction to Software Development with Python - online

This two day introductory short course to software development with Python is spread across four consecutive mornings and covers the following:

Automating Tasks with the Unix Shell - 20th October  (half day - morning)

Learn the basic concepts of using a text-based interface with a computer. Use the shell to run basic productivity commands and then chain these commands to perform more complicated actions. Use loops to automate time-consuming tasks such as processing or moving large numbers of individual data files. Use the powerful search features to find text in files.

Version Control with Git - 21st October  (half day - morning)

Track changes to files made by yourself to be able to more effectively recover from mistakes. Track changes made by a team to be able to work more effectively in collaboration.

Building Programs with Python - 22nd and 23rd October (2 x half days - mornings)

Learn the basics of the Python programming language. Learn how to document and add comments to Python code to make it sustainable and user-friendly. Use Python libraries to access the massive amount of tools available from the Python community. Learn the basics of making graphs using MatPlotLib.

Course Description

Learning Outcomes:

Automating Tasks with the Unix Shell

• Explain what the shell is and how it relates to graphical interfaces.
• Explain when and why command-line interfaces should be used instead of graphical interfaces.
• Explain the similarities and differences between a file and a directory.
• Translate an absolute path into a relative path and vice versa.
• Construct absolute and relative paths that identify specific files and directories.
• Use options and arguments to change the behaviour of a shell command.
• Demonstrate the use of tab completion and explain its advantages.
• Understand and describe the components of a shell command.
• Learn how to access help documentation for shell commands.
• Create new directories, also known as folders.
• Create files within directories using an editor or by copying and renaming existing files.
• Display the contents of a file using the command line.
• Delete specified files and/or directories.
• Capture a command’s output in a file using redirection.
• Use redirection to have a command use a file’s contents instead of keyboard input.
• Add commands together in a sequence using pipes, so output of one command becomes input of another.
• Explain what usually happens if a program or pipeline isn’t given any input to process.
• Explain Unix’s ‘small pieces, loosely joined’ philosophy.
• Use grep to select lines from text files that match simple patterns.
• Use find to find files and directories whose names match simple patterns.
• Use the output of one command as the command-line argument(s) to another command.
• Explain what is meant by ‘text’ and ‘binary’ files, and why many common tools don’t handle the latter well.
• Write a shell script that runs a command or series of commands for a fixed set of files.
• Run a shell script from the command line.
• Write a shell script that operates on a set of files defined by the user on the command line.#
• Demonstrate how to see what commands have recently been executed.
• Create pipelines that include user-written shell scripts.
• Write a loop that applies one or more commands separately to each file in a set of files.
• Trace the values taken on by a loop variable during execution of the loop.
• Explain the difference between a variable’s name and its value.

Version Control with Git

• Understand the benefits of an automated version control system.
• Understand the basics of how automated version control systems work.
• Configure git the first time it is used on a computer
• Understand the meaning of the --global configuration flag
• Add an SSH key to a GitHub account
• Create a repository from a template.
• Clone and use a Git repository.
• Describe the purpose of the .git directory.
• Go through the modify-add-commit cycle for one or more files.
• Describe where changes are stored at each stage in the modify-add-commit cycle.
• Identify and use Git revision numbers.
• Compare files with previous versions of themselves.
• Restore old versions of files.
• Understand git push and git pull
• Encounter and resolve a conflict
• Understand why you would use a branch
• Understand git branch and git merge
• Use a .gitignore file to ignore specific files and explain why this is useful.

Building Programs with Python

• Run the Python interpreter
• Understand what variables are in Python
• Create and assign values to variables
• Understand what lists and arrays are in Python
• Index and slice lists and arrays
• Write for loops to repeat simple calculations.
• Build a basic Python script and run it.
• Track changes to a loop variable as the loop runs.
• Track changes to other variables as they are updated by a for loop.
• Write as basic Python script that uses loops.
• Write a script to open a data file and print out its contents.
• Perform some operations on strings to extract desired data from it.
• Understand the basics of how Python handles objects.
• Understand good practices of how and when to write a code comment.
• Write conditional statements including if, elif, and else branches.
• Evaluate expressions containing and and or.
• Use conditionals to conditionally process input data.
• Define a function that takes parameters.
• Return a value from a function.
• Understand the scope of function variables and parameters.
• Documenting a function.
• Understand why we should divide programs into small, single-purpose functions.
• Define and use a module that contains functions.
• Be able to read and understand how Python reports errors through tracebacks
• Understand how and why errors occur in Python, and common types of errors
• Use the values of command-line arguments in a program.
• Handle flags and files separately in a command-line program.
• Read data from standard input in a program so that it can be used in a pipeline.
• Explain what a library is, and what libraries are used for.
• Load a Python library and use the things it contains.
• Read tabular data from a file.
• Select individual values and subsections from data.
• Perform operations on arrays of data.
• Display simple graphs
• Plot data using matplotlib library
• Analyse data from multiple files