Python Programming class for delegates who have already self-taught the basics
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2012-10-25 12:47:42 - Graham Ellis
It's quite possible to "self-teach" in Python, but to get the best from the language you need to appreciate its philosophy, the object oriented approach, and how the two work together, you really need something more formal. That way, you'll learn how to design, build, test and maintain code that performs well, is quick to write and easy to look after, is simple for others to pick up and encourages code reuse.
On both our Learning to Program in Python course and our Python Programming course, we introduce Python to delegate who haven't done any Python before and help give them a rock solid foundation. But what about Python programmers who have already learned something of the language off their own bat, but know that there's so much more that they could do with Python, and they know that they could be so much more effective in doing it? It's for this group of people that we're trialling a new course - Intermediate Python, to run as a public course from 20th to 22nd November 2012 at Well House Manor.
Intermediate Python
For: Delegates with limited prior Pyton programming experience
Objective: To teach delegates the tools to design and write good, maintainable, well tested and reusable code in Python, and to do that work efficiently.
Cost: £850.00 + VAT (without overnight accommodation). Add 60 pounds + VAT per room per night if you don't want to commute.
The first morning of the course is "fast start Python" - dotting i-s and crossing t-s for delegates who may already be using certain features (but aren't sure why!) and going through underlying paradigms which infuse Python through and through and make it such a great language. So you'll be clear on muttable v immutable, assign v shallow copy, dicts v lists v tuples, and when to use which. And in the afternoon, we'll similarly cover the fundamentals of object orientation the Python way. Even on the first day, robust design, commenting, documentation, re-usablility and testing for an integrated part of the philosophy we teach.
The course then carries on to cover more advanced object features, such as namespaces, decorators, multiple inheritance, mixins, modules and packages, attributes, autoloading and operator overriding, with practical examples to show how you would use these features in a real world application. Design techniques and design patterns - although a general OO topic - are covered with specific attention to how they're best implemented in Python to make for quick to write, easy to test, straightforward to maintain and natural to reuse code.
Iterators and Generators, Regular Expressions, List Comprehensions, Exceptions, Caching, recursion and memoisation ... and much more. You'll learn how to make power use of Python - not only for short programs and small data sets, but also as a part of bigger systems and for handling significant data effciently. We'll look at Python modules that you'll make common use of, including threading, os, os.path and unittest and others, and at data access including XML, SQL, JSON and other data store interfaces.
Your Tutor: Graham Ellis (it's me writing this page!). I love working in Python and training people on the language; we have a strong customer base, with plenty of clients who keep sending more delegates to us, so we've clearly got it about right. See [here] for personal details, or [here] for more about our training centre, course organisation, etc
Enquiries / bookings: email info@wellho.net, or phone 01225 708225
Dates: Running as a trial public course from Tuesday 20th November 2012. Also available as a private course for groups of delegates from the same company, at a mutually convenient date.
Places: We're limiting this first run of the course to just five delegates - that's even fewer that our normal maximum of 8 - to ensure that every single delegate gets the very best from the course