Intro to Python

• Authors: Charles Zhu, Lina Tran, Madeleine Bonsma
• Research field: Astronomy & astrophysics
• Lesson topic: Introduction to Python syntax and functionality
• Lesson content URL: https://github.com/UofTCoders/studyGroup/tree/gh-pages/lessons/python/intro

Preface:

This is a very basic introduction to the Python programming language, based largely off of the tutorials in the Beginners’ Guide to Python, in particular the Learn Python Tutorials.

Only the command line and a basic text editor are required, but quite a few integrated development environments exist, however, including IDLE and PyCharm. Madeleine recommends WingIDE101.

Lesson Overview:

Python implementations generally interpret code (though compilers also exist). The interpreter that comes with python is accessible by typing

python

into the command line (or clicking the executable on your GUI). To run scripts and programs, we can instead type

python practice_code.py

IPython is an improved interactive console that’s both easier to use and supports additional functionality. To run IPython, type

ipython

To run scripts and programs within ipython, type within IPython

run practice_code.py

The lesson covers:

• Hello World and print statements
• Number and string manipulation
• Lists, tuples and dicts
• Importing libraries
• Function declaration
• IPython debugging

The official Python documentation site goes into much more detail regarding all topics covered in this code-along. Python is supported by a very, very extensive breadth of packages, a list can be found here Like with git, please check out StackOverflow for any question on it.