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Core Python 3: Getting Started

by Austin Bingham and Robert Smallshire

In this course we'll introduce you to the essentials of the Python language, development culture, and important parts of the Python standard library. This course will help you develop the foundation you need to work on any Python project.

What you'll learn

Python is a big language, and it's important to have a thorough grounding in its key concepts in order to be productive and create high-quality Python programs. In our experience, starting off in the right direction and avoiding early misconceptions is crucial to success with Python, and that's the kind of start we aim to provide. In this course, Core Python 3: Getting Started, we are going to introduce you to the essentials of the Python language as well as important parts of the Python standard library. Some of the major topics that we will cover include: Python's fundamental data types, using functions and modules to organize your code, Python's underlying object model, defining your own types using classes, and working with iteration and iterable objects. By the end this course, you'll have the skills and knowledge to work on almost any Python project, and you'll be in a great position to continue learning more advanced aspects of the language.

Table of contents

Course Overview
1min

Course FAQ

What prerequisites are needed for this course?

Before beginning the course, you should be familiar with basic computer concepts, like files and running programs. This course doesn't assume any specific programming experience, but a basic understanding of concepts like functions and program execution can be helpful. From here, you should feel comfortable diving into other Core Python language courses on Organizing Larger Programs, Classes and Object‑Orientation, Functions and Functional Programming, and Robust Resource and Error Handling.

What is Python?

Python is an interpreted, high-level and general-purpose programming language. Python's design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace.

Why is learning Python important?

Python is one of the most loved programming languages by developers, data scientists, software engineers, and even hackers because of its versatility, flexibility, and object-oriented features.

Why do we need Python?

Python is a general purpose and high level programming language. You can use Python for developing desktop GUI applications, websites and web applications. The simple syntax rules of the programming language further makes it easier for you to keep the code base readable and application maintainable.

What can Python be used on?

Python can be used on multiple programming paradigms, web testing, data extraction, artificial Intelligence (AI) and data science researches. Python can also be used on web applications and internet development, database easy access, interface customization, quick system integration, cybersecurity, and many other programs.

About the authors

Austin is a founding director of Sixty North, a software consulting, training, and application development company. A native of Texas, in 2008 Austin moved to Stavanger, Norway where he helped develop industry-leading oil reservoir modeling software in C++ and Python. Prior to that he worked at National Instruments developing LabVIEW, at Applied Research Labs (Univ. of Texas at Austin) developing sonar systems for the U.S. Navy, and at a number of telecommunications companies. He is an ex... more

Robert Smallshire is a founder of Sixty North, a software product and consulting business in Norway. Robert has worked in senior architecture and technical management roles for software companies in the energy sector processing the masses of information flowing from today's digital oil fields. He has designed, and implemented effective architectures for sophisticated scientific and enterprise software in Python, C++, and C#. Robert is a regular speaker at conferences, meetups and corporate softw... more

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