Basics of Python course

A beginner, notebook-based course in programming with Python — no prior programming experience assumed. Each class is a Jupyter notebook lesson (ClassNN/ClassN.ipynb) with a matching exercise worksheet (ClassNN/LabN.ipynb).

How to use this course

Work through the classes in order; each lab assumes only what has been taught so far. Inside a class, follow the GOTO Lab exercises X-Y callouts — they tell you when you are ready for which exercises.

• Course introduction and outcomes: CourseIntroduction.ipynb
• Sample exam: SampleExam.ipynb

You can run the notebooks without installing anything by uploading them to Google Colab, or run them locally:

pip install jupyter
pip install -r requirements.txt   # libraries used in Classes 9-11
jupyter notebook

Course outline

Class	Topic
1	Introduction to Python: print, data types, variables, operators
2	Collection data types: lists, tuples, sets, dictionaries
3	Control statements: if, loops, and the turtle
4	Functions
5	Scripts, modules and file operations
6	Algorithms: complexity, search, sort, recursion
7	Object-oriented programming 1
8	Object-oriented programming 2
9	API programming with requests and JSON
10	Web scraping with BeautifulSoup
11	Cryptography: hashing, symmetric and asymmetric encryption

For maintainers

Every notebook is executable top-to-bottom on Python 3.10+. To check (and to regenerate recorded cell outputs), use the tooling in tools/:

pip install nbformat nbclient ipykernel -r requirements.txt
python3 tools/execute_notebooks.py --all            # verify all notebooks run
python3 tools/execute_notebooks.py --all --write    # ... and save fresh outputs

The runner executes each notebook in a fresh kernel (in the notebook's own folder, answering '5' to any input() call). Two cell metadata tags control execution:

• raises-exception — the cell is an intentional error demonstration
• skip-execution — the cell is not auto-executed (e.g. turtle GUI demos)

Add a tag to a cell with:

python3 tools/tag_cell.py NOTEBOOK.ipynb "substring of the cell" raises-exception

Requirements

Python 3.10+. Most classes need only the standard library. Classes 9-11 also use the packages in requirements.txt (requests, beautifulsoup4, cryptography, rsa, numpy).