Introductory Python Course - UiT

Welcome to this introductory programming course based on the Python programming language.

Recommended Python Learning Path

Basic Topics

• Variables
• Conditions
• Chained Conditionals
• Operators
• Control Flow
• Loops and Iterables
• Basic Data Structures
• Functions
• Mutable vs. Immutable
• Common Methods
• File IO

Intermediate Topics

• Object Oriented Programming
• Data Structures
• Comprehensions
• Lambda Functions
• Map, Filter
• Collections
• *args & **kwargs
• Inheritance
• Dunder Methods
• PIP
• Environments
• Modules
• Async IO

Advanced Topics

• Decorators
• Generators
• Context Managers
• Metaclasses
• Concurrency
• Parallelism
• Testing
• Packages

Iterators and Generators

The Iterator Protocol

x = iter([1, 2, 3])
>>> x
<listiterator object at 0x1004ca850>
>>> next(x)
1
>>> next(x)
2
>>> next(x)
3
>>> next(x)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
StopIteration

Example Implementations

class Range:
    def __init__(self, n):
        self.i = 0
        self.n = n

    def __iter__(self):
        return self

    def __next__(self):
        if self.i < self.n:
            i = self.i
            self.i += 1
            return i
        else:
            raise StopIteration()

class ReverseRange:
	def __init__(self, count):
		self.i = count
		self.count = count
	def __iter__(self):
		return self
	def __next__(self):
		if self.i > 0:
			i = self.i
			self.i -= 1
			return i
		else:
			raise StopIteration()

Generators

def yrange(n):
    i = 0
    while i < n:
        yield i
        i += 1

def even_generator(numbers):
    for number in numbers:
        if number % 2 == 0:
            yield int(number)

Generator Comprehension

Template

my_gen = (<expression> for <item> in <iterable> if <condition>)

Example

eg = (int(number) for number in my_list if number % 2 == 0)

Comprehensions

List Comprehension

Template

my_list = [<expression> for <item> in <iterable> if <condition>]

Example

squares = [i * i for i in range(10)]

Dictionary Comprehension

Template

my_dict = {<key>:<value> for <item> in <iterable> if <condition>}

Example

dict1 = {'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4, 'e': 5}
# Double each value in the dictionary
double_dict1 = {k:v*2 for (k,v) in dict1.items()}  

Set Comprehension

Template

my_set = {<expression> for <item> in <iterable> if <condition>}

Example

>>> {s for s in [1, 2, 1, 0]}
set([0, 1, 2])
>>> {s**2 for s in [1, 2, 1, 0]}
set([0, 1, 4])
>>> {s**2 for s in range(10)}
set([0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81])

Truthy and Falsy in Python

Falsy Values

Sequences and Collections

• Empty lists []
• Empty tuples ()
• Empty dictionaries {}
• Empty sets set()
• Empty strings ""
• Empty ranges range(0)

Numbers

• Zero of any numeric type
• Integer: 0
• Float: 0.0
• Complex: 0j

Constants

• None
• False

Truthy Values

By default, an object is considered true.

Truthy Values

• Non-empty sequences or collections (lists, tuples, strings, dictionaries, sets).
• Numeric values that are not zero.
• True

Resources

• Structural pattern matching in Python 3.10
• Time complexity in CPython
• Pass by reference in Python
• Variables in Python
• Variables and scope - Global, nonlocal and local
• Truthy and Falsy in Python
• What every programmer needs to know about encodings
• How Python does Unicode
• Dictionary comprehension tutorial
• How to use Python lambda functions
• Destructuring in Python
• Listening to sorting algorithms
• Tkinter 8.5 reference
• Iterators and generators
• Four types of comprehensions
• When to use a list comprehension
• Context managers and Python's with statement
• Primer on Python decorators
• Introduction to Python generators