TELEVISION

How to Program: Computer Science Concepts and Python Exercises

Series: Great Courses
4.6
(168)
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Episodes
24
Rating
TVPG
Year
2016
Language
English
Publisher
The Great Courses

About

Programming is an eminently learnable skill that gives you unrivalled problem-solving power you can apply in all areas of life. It's also a fun, creative activity that provides insight into how we control the devices that influence virtually every aspect of our lives. The 24 engaging and information-rich lessons of How to Program teach you one of the world's most accessible and powerful computer languages, Python.

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Episodes

1. What Is Programming? Why Python?

30m

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Hello, World! Following tradition, write a program that produces this greeting as your first exercise in coding a computer program. Learn why Python is the ideal computer language for beginners and many others. After this lesson, follow the onscreen instructions for installing Python and the programming editor PyCharm.

2. Variables: Operations and Input/Output

30m

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Study some of the basic operations of computers. First, investigate the memory hierarchy and what the CPU does. Then consider variables, which are like boxes where units of data are stored in a program. Look at simple arithmetic operations with variables, and try input/output commands.

3. Conditionals and Boolean Expressions

30m

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Any time a computer takes different paths depending on your response, there is usually a conditional statement involved. Delve into these widely used tools, looking at branching points, comparisons, if/then statements, nesting conditionals, and Boolean (true/false) expressions.

4. Basic Program Development and Testing

30m

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Take the plunge and write a program that's useful for saving money! In the process, learn the importance of planning ahead, testing often, and building your code incrementally. As your program takes shape, Professor Keyser describes instructive incidents from computer history and his own experience.

5. Loops and Iterations

30m

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One of the biggest thrills from writing code comes from getting a computer to perform a sequence of instructions repeatedly until a task is complete. Discover the ease of writing such loop programs and also the peril of getting stuck in infinite loops. Investigate while loops, for loops, and iterations.

6. Files and Strings

30m

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Learn the fundamentals of files: what they are, how they're named, and how to interact with them. Typically, the file format that you write to and read from will be one long string-a sequence of alphanumeric characters. See how these differ from binary files such as images, which are composed of 1's and 0's.

7. Operations with Lists

30m

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Python makes it very easy to create lists and perform a wide range of operations on them. Learn the fundamentals of building lists. Then experiment with indexing into lists, looping over lists, and making slices of lists, lists of lists, and list-like structures called tuples.

8. Top-Down Design of a Data Analysis Program

30m

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Take what you have learned about lists, loops, files, and other techniques and design a program that lets you analyze weather data. Sound daunting? Discover the trick of top-down design, which breaks a complex task into manageable parts and is applicable not just to coding but to any major project.

9. Functions and Abstraction

30m

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One of the key ideas in computer science is abstraction-using simple interfaces to manage complex procedures. See how functions can simplify away the details of complex process, freeing attention to focus on what goes into a function and what comes out. Learn when to use functions and the side effects that sometimes occur.

10. Parameter Passing, Scope, and Mutable Data

30m

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Complete your introduction to elementary programming by looking at parameters-the major technique for passing information through functions. Learn when a parameter or variable is in scope, how to work with list data that can change when passed as a parameter, and what it means for parameters to have default values.

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