practical-python

This is the course material for Practical Python Programming, a structured Python training course created by David Beazley. It has been taught in person to more than 400 groups since 2007, reaching scientists, systems administrators, traders, and other professionals who needed to add Python to their skill set. The material is now freely available under a Creative Commons license.

The course is designed for people who already know how to program in at least one other language. It does not start from scratch. Instead, it focuses on the parts of Python that come up constantly in real work: writing scripts, working with data, and organizing programs so that they stay readable as they grow. Students work through roughly 130 hands-on coding exercises over 25 to 35 hours.

The format is entirely text and code. There are no videos. The expectation is that you learn by writing Python, not by watching it. The material covers Python 3.6 and newer, and beyond a working Python installation, no additional tools are required to start.

The course is not aimed at web developers, and it is not a reference for engineers building very large systems. It covers the practical middle ground that most people using Python actually need: get data in, do something with it, write programs that you and your colleagues can later understand and modify.

The full set of notes is available as a GitHub Pages site linked from the repository. Discussion happens on a Gitter channel. Bug reports can be filed through the issue tracker, though pull requests are only accepted by invitation. The Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license allows reuse, translation, derivative works, and teaching, as long as attribution is preserved and the same license terms are carried forward.