Gentle hands-on introduction to Python programming
General context
This course is organised over two full days. With the help of plenty hands-on exercises, you will get introduced into the different types of variables in python, the peculiarities of python and good programming habits. This course will provide you an ideal stepping stone for further developing programming skills in Python.
- Learning the basics of Python programming: different variables, reading files, writing files, conditional statements
- Being able to write a basic Python script from scratch
Aimed for people with no programming skills whatsoever. If you want to follow the Biopython or the MySQL training and you have little/no experience with Python, please register for this training.
Trainers
Wim Vranken
Wim Vranken is research professor at the VUB in Brussels, and director of the (IB)2 VUB/ULB Interuniversity Institute of Bioinformatics in Brussels.
Program
- Short introduction to programming and Python
- Print statement - showing what your program does.
- Variables and operators - how to do math
- Conditions - deciding what to do
- Loops - doing the same thing with different information
- Lists and tuples - how to handle a range of variables
- File reading and writing - getting hold of data and dumping your results
- Functions - re-using the same bit of code
- Imports - what functions does Python provide?
- Dictionaries - organising your variables
- Assert - stop before things go wrong
- Classes - get the most out of Python
Throughout the course we'll stress the importance of 'good programming practice', such as clear variable names and adding comments to your code.
Practical info
Ghent - Clemenspoort
Overwale 3
9000 Ghent
Belgium
Ghent - Clemenspoort
The train station Ghent St-Pieters is only 250 m away. We have 40 bike lots.
Ghent - Clemenspoort
We offer parking lots (1.20 € per hour). GPS address: Sint-Denijslaan 251.
Please take the neem the exit SPORTHAL HoGent (not Campus HoGent) and drive all the way to the end, so past the parking slots of HoGent.
Ghent - Clemenspoort
+32 476 46 10 40