Overview

This course teaches you how to write small scripts that automate tasks, object oriented programming, web scraping,…. For this, we will rely on the Python programming language:

  • It is one of the commonly used programming languages.
  • It is one of the most user-friendly languages out there.
  • A very large number of packages are available, which is essential for scripting.

The focus lies on learning to program more efficiently. Your code has to produce correct results: it is your responsibility to check your work properly and ensure it is written efficiently. The first series of exercises are accompanied by tests, but with the ‘real deal’ exercises, that won’t be the case anymore. You will have to split up the task at hand in smaller pieces, implement helper functions, check them, etc.

You are free to use all of the functionality Python provides. It is not our goal to have you write complex algorithms. So, please do not write your own sum function, use the built-in one. You will see that Python has a lot of built-in functions for you to make use of. Therefore, it is very important that you develop the habit of skimming through the documentation and looking up information online.