Computing Using Python - EDX
Computing Using Python - EDX
Learning Objectives
This course has three high-level learning objectives. At the conclusion of this course, you will
be able to:
Describe and apply the fundamental thought processes and theories of computing.
Write command-line computer programs using fundamental principles of programming.
Apply those abilities to a real target domain.
Course Content
This course is broken into five units:
Unit 1: Computing. In this unit, we'll cover the basics of computing: what it means to write computer
code, how to read computer code, and what it means to run and debug code.
Unit 2: Procedural Programming. In this unit, we'll cover the basic paradigm of programming,
procedural programming. In procedural programming, series of commands are executed in order.
Here, we'll discuss variables, logical operators, and mathematical operators.
Unit 3: Control Structures. In this unit, we'll cover control structures, which are lines of code that
control when other lines of code run. We'll cover conditionals, loops, functions, and error handling.
Unit 4: Data Structures. In this unit, we'll cover how data is structured to be operated upon by a
computer. Specifically, we'll focus on structures that bring together multiple different pieces of data,
like strings, lists, dictionaries, and file input and output.
Unit 5: Advanced Topics. In this unit, we'll preview the next topics in computing: object-oriented
programming and computer algorithms.
Course Structure
Within those units, we have divided the content of this class into three general areas:
Foundations: There exist fundamental principles of programming that span across platforms and
languages. These are taught as general concepts before moving into their implementation in code.
This forms about 30% of our material.
Language: In order to write code, you need a language to write it in. In the language lessons, we'll
take the concepts learned in the foundations lessons and implement them in a specific language (in
this class, Python). This forms about 60% of our material.
Domain: The power of computing is that we can develop programs to actually accomplish real-world
tasks. For the last part of our material, we'll take the concepts we just learned in the given language,
and apply them to a specific domain. In this class, that will be computer graphics and user interfaces.
This forms about 10% of our material.
Each chapter of the course will switch back and forth between foundational material,
language-specific material, and domain-specific material.