Summary

In a three-hour gallop through the essentials of the Python language you will learn enough to be able to make sense of many of PyCon's beginner- and intermediate-level sessions.

If you have been thinking about starting to use Python but have not yet taken the first step this tutorial will quickly give you the basics of the language and help you get the most out of your attendance at PyCon.

Bring a laptop if you want to try out the code samples that Steve will be discussing. Everyone can ask questions to assist the learning process. If necessary follow-up sessions can be organized in Open Space.

Intended Audience

Programmers of other languages who want to find out more about Python; the idea is to help you make sense of code you will see in other PyCon presentations. A couple of years programming experience would be helpful but anyone who has programmed a computer should benefit from this tutorial.

Requirements

None, but a laptop with a recent (2.4 or later) Python installed would be useful to try out examples during the tutorial.

Detailed outline

Please note that you will be taking a three-day class in three hours. You are therefore necessarily going to have a limited time for hands-on exercises, but you are encouraged to try things out, and there will be some downloadable example materials for use during and after the tutorial.

1. Python Syntax Basics

   Names

   Numbers

   Strings

   Tuples

   Lists

   Dictionaries

   Expressions

   Statements

   Assignment

   The print statement

2. Program Flow Control

   Indentation in Python

   Conditional execution

   Looping constructs

   for

   while

   break

   continue

3. Functions

   Positional arguments

   Keyword arguments

   Function attributes

   Useful builtin function

4. Exception Handling

   The exception hierarchy

   try ... except

   try ... finally

5. Namespace Concepts

   Name bindings

   Memory allocation in Python

6. Object-Oriented Python

   Defining classes

   The class namespace

   The instance namespace

   The special __init__ method

   Name resolution order

7. Specialising Classes

   Inheritance Concepts

   Mixin Classes

8. Modularity in Python

   Role of the module

   Namespaces

   Importing modules

   import

   import ... from

   Packages

9. Data structuring in Python

   List comprehensions

   Generators

   Generator expressions

   Instances as records

10. Formatting and I/O

    Files and "file-like" objects

    The % operator

    Random access to files

11. Access to the Environment

    The sys module

    The os module

    Running system commands

12. Python Documentation

    The built-in documentation

    Using pydoc

    Other on-line sources

Presenter Bio

Steve Holden is the author of Python Web Programming and has given many well-received talks on Python topics including network programming, the wxPython GUI toolkit and the Python database API. He has been a Director of the Python Software Foundation for four years. Steve lives in Fairfax, VA with his wife and two cats.

With forty years programming experience, ten of them as a Python user, and fifteen years as a professional consultant, speaker and instructor, Steve has presented successful tutorials at the last two PyCons.