This all started a number of years back with a statistics course at university. During office hours I was innundated with students needing explanations of various statistical concepts. As I was sitting there explaining linear regression for the umpteenth time, it me struck how saying the same thing over and over again wasn't very efficient - so I decided to make a video. I posted the video to youtube, problem solved. I continued making videos for my students and then unexpectedly starting fielding questions from a much larger community of statistics students that found my videos on youtube. The feedback I received was favorable and so I set about producing more videos focused on solving problems with Python and Excel.

More and more today's problems are solved with computer programs. Whether you are looking for a specific solution or trying to improve productivity creative thinking and problem solving skills which is exactly what computer programming techniques teach.

Classes size is limited to 10 students

One main instructor, supported by 1 or 2 teaching assistants. Our goal is for everyone to have one-on-one help as needed.

Python is an easy to learn language in comparison to other popular languages such as Java – yet it is powerful enough to create full scale applications. In fact Python happens to be one of the most popular languages in the world today.

Python is an interpreted language, which means it is easy to test code snippets quickly in an interactive python shell without going through problematic compilations.

Python is a modern, powerful object oriented programming language that can be used to write simple scripts (short programs) or full scale applications. Like many modern programming languages, it has syntactic similarities with C++. This means once you learn how to program with Python, it is that much easier to learn another modern programming language – of course there may be no good reason to learn anything else.

Python is notable for its “simple” syntax making it ideal for beginning programmers – yet it also the language of choice for many developers across many disciplines including scientific applications, data science and web application development.

• File and computer management concepts
• Common command line interactions
• How programs work and how to write code
• Common patterns, variables, control structures, data and data
• structures, branching, looping, etc.
• Procedural and Functional programming
• Introductory Object-oriented programming
• How to write (relatively simple) computer games
• Where to go for next steps

The short is answer is we do! Just not for first timers. Java is much more complex to get going with. A good deal of the explanation to questions like “why do you have to do it like that”? Is “because you do”. Or “because the programming fairies made it that way…” We want to learn common programming patterns, not language idiosyncrasies. We want to have fun learning too. The typical python program is 3 – 5 times shorter than a Java program written to accomplish the same task!

There may well be other languages that lend themselves to the role of “first” language, but the interesting thing about Python is its use in nearly every industry to varying degrees. Python is not a throw away language!

There are numerous Python communities, excellent documentation as well as a number of well developed libraries for specialized programming needs such as scientific computing, web development and of course game development! And python integrates easily with more “industrial” programming languages like Java or C. It’s even the language of choice for writing MineCraft mods!