Python

This tag is pertaining to posts regarding the programming language Python

Khan Academy – Python Videos

Posted by memecoder on September 2, 2013
Posted in: Programming. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

After reading an article on MOOC’s from Forbes – How MOOC’s will Revolutionize Corporate Learning and Development, I took a look at what Khan Academy had to offer.

Essentially Khan Academy is “a library of over 4,600 videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice, we’re on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.”

There is a whole section of stuff pertaining to Python Programming that could be useful for revision or to clarify key Python related programming concepts.

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Learn to Program: Week One!

Posted by memecoder on August 25, 2013
Posted in: Programming. Tagged: , . 1 Comment

Ok I admit programming is fun!

I got to play with IDLE and creating and defining my own variables, expressions, functions, etc… in Python.

Some of the exercises got us to create some little scripts to convert temperature, calculate the area and perimeter of a triangle but I let my mind run wild and did up little scripts to compute age  and distance. I was particularly proud of my mile to kilometre script as I’ve been doing a lot of distance based activities like running and walking, etc… helps in determining speed and calories burned.

Programming already yielding benefits!

I did run into a few terminology and concept issues:

1. Arguments vs Parameters

Which term to use when defining a function or performing a function call

2. Visualizing this memory address and the concept of objects

There is a great visualizer that seems to help with this conceptual issue: Python Visualizer

Learn to Program: Syllabus!

Posted by memecoder on August 19, 2013
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Here’s the syllabus to the course I’m taking:

Syllabus

This course provides an introduction to computer programming intended for people with no programming experience. It covers the basics of programming in Python including elementary data types (numeric types, strings, lists, dictionaries and files), control flow, functions, objects, methods, fields and mutability. Here is a tentative list of topics.

Week Topics
1 Installing Python, IDLE, mathematical expressions, variables, assignment statement, calling and defining functions, syntax and semantic errors
2 Strings, input/output, Booleans, function reuse, function design recipe, docstrings
3 import, namespaces, if statements
4 for loops, fancy string manipulation
5 while loops, lists, mutability
6 files
7 tuples, dictionaries

Python it is!

Posted by memecoder on August 15, 2013
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Awhile back I remember watching a TED talk on the future of free education and a free education course provider called Coursera.

The talk was called What we’re learning from online education by Daphne Koller.

After filtering through the available courses in the computer programming field I found a course that starts on August 19th called Learn to Program: The Fundamentals.

The course is taught by Jennifer Campbell and Paul Gries at the University of Toronto but offered freely through the Coursera site.

The programming language they use for the course is Python.

So I took a leap and registered in the course. It begins on August 19th.

I also reviewed a lot of the materials on Python’s own site: Python.org