Invest in your career in Python programming. Master the core principles of Python scripting and develop your ability to solve practical problems.
Suggested by: Coursera (What is Coursera?)
No prior knowledge required
No unnecessary risks
Developed by expert faculty from the Department of Computer Science and Data Science at Rice University, this specialization is designed for beginners who want to acquire basic programming skills. Over the course of four courses, you will learn core programming concepts in Python 3, preparing you to use Python to perform routine scripting tasks. This knowledge will provide you with a solid foundation for a career in data science, software engineering, or other fields that require programming.
Each course concludes with a hands-on project where you will apply your Python scripting skills. The introductory projects will focus on typical scripting problems such as:
Later in the internship, you will learn to work with data stored in files for the purpose of:
These projects include:
At the end of the internship, you will complete a project in which:
This course will introduce you to the world of Python programming! We will learn the basics of programming and how to build basic Python programs. We will cover expressions, variables, functions, logic, and conditionals, which are fundamental concepts in computer programming.
We will also learn how to use Python modules, which allow you to take advantage of the many functions already available in the Python language. These concepts and skills will help you start thinking like a computer programmer and understand how to write programs in Python.
By the end of the course, you will be able to write short Python programs that perform real-world tasks. This course is the foundation for building expertise in Python programming. As the first course in the specialization, it provides the basic building blocks required for success in learning to write more complex Python programs.
This course uses Python 3. Although many Python programs use Python 2, Python 3 is the future of the Python language. This course will use the Python 3 version of the CodeSkulptor development environment, which is specifically designed to help novice programmers learn quickly.
CodeSkulptor runs in any modern browser and requires no software installation, allowing you to start writing and running small programs right away. In later courses in this specialization, we’ll help you move on to more advanced desktop development environments.
This course will continue the introduction to Python programming that began with Python Programming Fundamentals. We will learn about various data representations, including strings, lists, and tuples, which form the core of all Python programs.
We will also learn how to access files so that we can store and retrieve data within our programs. These concepts and skills will help you manipulate data and write more complex Python programs.
By the end of the course, you will be able to write Python programs that can manipulate data stored in files. This will expand your Python programming expertise, allowing you to write a wide variety of scripts using Python.
This course uses Python 3. While most Python programs continue to use Python 2, Python 3 is the future of the Python language. This course introduces basic Python desktop development environments, which allow you to run Python programs directly on your computer.
This choice allows for a seamless transition from online development environments.
This course will continue the introduction to Python programming that began with Python Programming Fundamentals and Python Data Representations. We will learn to read, store, and manipulate tabular data, which is a common task.
We will also learn about CSV files and Python’s support for reading and writing them. CSV files are a plain text file format that allows you to exchange tabular data between different programs.
These concepts and skills will help you expand your knowledge of Python programming and enable you to process more complex data. By the end of the course, you will be comfortable working with tabular data in Python. This will expand your expertise in Python programming, allowing you to write a wider variety of scripts using Python.
This course uses Python 3. While most Python programs continue to use Python 2, Python 3 is the future of the Python language. This course uses basic Python desktop development environments, which allow you to run Python programs directly on your computer.
This is the final course in the specialization, building on the knowledge learned in Python programming fundamentals, Python data representations, and Python data analysis. We will learn how to install external packages for use within Python, obtain data from online sources, and then we will clean, process, analyze, and return the data.
This course will organize the skills learned during the internship and enable you to write interesting, practical, and useful programs. By the end of the course, you will be comfortable installing Python packages, analyzing existing data, and producing visualizations of that data.
This course will complete your studies as a scripter, enabling you to locate, install, and use Python packages written by others. You will be able to effectively utilize the many available tools and packages to improve your efficiency and write useful programs.
