Programming Essentials in Python is a course offered by Cisco Networking Academy in collaboration with OpenEDG Python Institute to teach students the fundamentals of programming in Python. The course is designed for beginners with no prior programming experience, and it aims to equip students with essential skills to develop simple programs.
Throughout the course, students will learn the basics of programming, including variables, data types, control structures, functions, and file processing. They will also explore essential Python libraries, such as NumPy, Pandas, and Matplotlib, which are used for scientific computing and data visualisation.
The programme of the course
The course is divided into four modules, each containing multiple chapters that build upon the concepts learned in the previous chapters.
The first module introduces students to the basics of programming and Python syntax. Students will learn how to use variables to store data, and how to use control structures, such as loops and conditional statements, to control program flow.
The second module focuses on functions, which are a fundamental concept in programming. Students will learn how to write functions to encapsulate and reuse code, and how to use built-in functions in Python. They will also learn about modules, which are pre-written code libraries that can be imported and used in a program.
In the third module, students will learn how to work with files in Python. They will learn how to read and write files, and how to manipulate file data using Python. They will also explore the basics of object-oriented programming, which is a programming paradigm that uses objects to represent real-world entities.
The final module covers more advanced topics, such as regular expressions, networking programming, and graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Students will learn how to use regular expressions to search for and manipulate text, how to create networked programs that communicate over the internet, and how to build simple GUIs using the Tkinter library.
The course is free and can be followed at your own pace for a total of approximately 75 hours of work.