Python Bootcamp
Python Bootcamp is an intensive 5 days of training in the Python language. This course is especially useful to developers and system administrators who are interested in using the Python language to access and extend existing systems.
The course provides a comprehensive introduction to the Python language followed by detailed coverage of object-oriented and functional programming techniques, systems programming, network programming, and Python extension programming. These topics are widely applicable to most areas of software development and will be of interest to any software engineer who is interested in using Python to develop non-trivial applications.
While most courses teach only the langauge, this course recognizes that Python programmers often need to interface with existing systems.
The class is taught by David Beazley, the author of the highly-acclaimed Python Essential Reference.
Python Bootcamp is designed for:
- scientific and numeric programming (Los Alamos, NASA)
- web-based systems and applications (Yahoo, Google)
- movie animation studios (ILM, Pixar)
- hardware testing and quality assurance (Hewlett Packard, Seagate)
- weather prediction applications (NOAA)
- the stock market, realtime experiments, gaming systems, etc.
Upon completion of Python Bootcamp, the student will:
- Develop applications using the Python Programming Language
- Utilize Python's built-in toolset
- Use OOP in Python
- Access databases from Python
- Create graphical interfaces with Python
- Apply Python as a scripting language
Upcoming Classes
| Date | Instructor | Price | Status | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 10 - 14 | Dave Beazley | $3500 | Register Now | Atlanta, Georgia |
| Dec 8 - 12 | Dave Beazley | €2800 | Register Now | Frankfurt, Germany |
Prerequisites
Students should already have programming experience in some other programming language.
Ideally, students should have some experience working with an object-oriented language (C++, Java) and scripting (Perl, Unix shell scripting, etc.)
Syllabus
| Section | Contents |
|---|---|
| Introduction to Python | An introduction to the Python programming language. Covers details of how to start and stop the interpreter and write programs. Introduces Python's basic datatypes, files, functions, and error handling. |
| Working with Data | A detailed tour of how to represent and work with data in Python. Covers tuples, lists, dictionaries, and sets. Students will also learn how to effectively use Python's very powerful list processing primitives such as list comprehensions. Finally, this section covers critical aspects of Python's underlying object model including variables, reference counting, copying, and type checking. |
| Program Structure, Control Flow, Functions,and Exceptions | More information about how to organize larger programs and how to reuse code. Covers more advanced aspects of Python control-flow and expands upon how to define and use functions. Also covers scoping rules, documentation strings, anonymous functions, exec, and eval. |
| Modules, Packages, and the Standard Library | How to organize programs into modules and packages. Expands upon further details of Python variable scoping rules and use of namespaces. This section concludes with a overview of some of the most commonly used library modules and instructions on how to install third party library modules. |
| Classes | An introduction to object-oriented programming in Python. Describes how to create new objects, overload operators, and utilize Python special methods. |
| Inside the Python Object Model | A detailed look at how objects are implemented in Python. Major topics include the definition of objects, the object lifecycle, object representation, attribute binding, inheritance, and special properties of classes including descriptors, properties, slots, private attributes, static methods, and class methods. |
| Working with Objects | A more detailed look at how to effectively utilize objects in Python. Topics include encapsulation of data and algorithms, how to organize inheritance hierarchies, abstract classes, and useful design patterns. A major theme of this section focuses on how to implement code so that there is a loose-coupling between different software components. In addition, we will explore object oriented programming techniques used throughout the Python standard library. |
| Object Persistence | How to save, restore, copy, and serialize objects. Covers the marshal, pickle, shelve, and struct modules. The programming API used to interface with relational databases such as MySQL, Oracle, and Sybase is also discussed. |
| Documentation, Testing, and Debugging | This section discusses many isses that are considered important to Python software development. This includes effective use of documentation strings and program testing using both the doctest and unittest modules. The Python debugger and profiler are also described. Finally, a number of tips are given for improving program reliability. |
| Iterators, Generators, Closures, and Decorators | Covers the iteration protocol, iterable objects, generators, generator expressions, and concepts related to "lazy" evaluation of Python statements. A major focus of this section concerns the use of iteration for solving various problems in systems programming (e.g., processing large datafiles and infinite data streams). |
| Working with Text | A more in-depth look at how to efficiently parse and generate text data in Python. Topics include string splitting, string stripping, string joining, and template strings. This section also covers the re module, Python's module for regular expression pattern matching and substitution. |
| Files and the file system | A more detailed look at file I/O in Python. Topics include how to work with files and directories in a portable manner as well as unicode I/O. Also covers useful modules for working with a wide variety of common file formats such as zip, gzip, bzip, tar, and CSV. |
| Working with Processes | This section covers details of the Python interpreter process including command line options, environment variables, and I/O. The problem of interacting with other processes and applications from Python is then discussed with detailed coveraged of the subprocess module. |
| Concurrency | Detailed coverage on different options for writing concurrent programs in Python. Topics include threads, message queues, co-routines, and co-processes. Special emphasis will be given to a technique of writing concurrent programs that is highly portable and easy to adapt to a variety of different system configurations. |
| Configuration and logging | This section focuses on two important problems that are often overlooked in systems programming classes---namely how to deal with application configuration files and how to add a logging capability to a program. Special attention is given to the ConfigParser and logging modules. |
| Network Fundamentals | An introduction to the basic concepts of network programming. Covers the essential details of TCP/IP and the essential concepts of socket programming. |
| Server side programming | Modules related to the implementation of Internet servers. Covers the SocketServer module. In addition, you will learn how to quickly write HTTP and XML-RPC servers. |
| Client-side programming | Detailed coverage of modules that allow you to interact with a wide variety of standard Internet services. These include HTTP, FTP, SMTP, and XML-RPC. Special attention will be given to the urllib2 module that allows Python to interact with web servers. |
| Internet Data Handling | An overview of modules related to processing common Internet data formats. Covers a number of low-level data encodings such as base64 and quopri. Special attention is given to parsing data associated with the web and email. |
| XML | A survey of XML processing options in Python. Discuss the three major XML interfaces; SAX2, DOM, and the ElementTree API. |
| Python extension building | An introduction to writing C/C++ extensions to Python. The section focuses on the mechanics of creating and compiling an extension module. The essential elements of creating hand-written extensions to Python are described. This is followed by an introduction to common Python extension building tools including Swig, ctypes, and Boost.Python. |
| Embedding Python | How to embed the Python interpreter into other applications. |
| COM | This section discusses how Python can integrate with COM on Windows. This allows Python to script common Windows applications. In addition, this integration allows Python to provide customized services to other COM-based applications. |
Onsite Training
We offer onsite training for Python Bootcamp: we provide an instructor and all class materials. You'll provide the classroom set up, computers for all students, a projector, and a screen. If you find that you'd like to see some customization of the class syllabus to fit a specific project or priority, we can do that too. To get a quote, talk about the syllabus, or ask general questions about onsite training, call us at (404) 527-6211.
Price
A five-day class, a student guide, a comfortable room, three delicious meals a day, a stylish "Big Nerd Ranch" t-shirt, and transportation to and from the airport for $3500. Plan to arrive on Sunday evening and depart on Friday afternoon.
When the class is offered in Europe, the price is €2800 plus VAT. (€2600 plus VAT if you register at least five weeks before the class begins.)