Python Basics: Interacting with the Internet

Overview

If you do not yet code and want to learn, this course is a great place to start. It will teach you how to use existing Python code to interact with data on the Internet in fun new ways. Instruction focuses on the conceptual basics of the programming language as it relates to working with online data. You'll be introduced to Python arithmetic operators, variables, values, and modules. At a higher level, you'll experience what an API is and how it works by playing with cat memes. Separate from the technical part of coding, there's the psychological part. Topic lectures will address the human side of code, and make you feel more prepared to see yourself as someone who uses code. You won’t code from scratch yourself, but will use prepared code to accomplish tasks and see how it works. Additional code demonstrations are available in the honors module of the course to provide broad exposure to Python interactions with internet data.

Syllabus

Pictures of Kittens in Python

In this module, you'll learn why it's worth learning to code. One reason is that you can do interesting stuff, like detect kittens in photographs. We'll learn what an API is by dealing in the basic currency of the social Internet: cat memes. Let's get started!

Code Notebooks

In this module, we will go over an elementary coding concepts and our basic platform. This lesson will be run in "code notebooks," a sort of interactive textbook that lets you read, run, and change working code examples. We will also look at the psychological part of learning code. Topic lectures will address the human side of code, and make you feel more prepared to see yourself as someone who codes.

Python as a Calculator

In this module, we will get our first proper lesson in the programming language Python, the beginning of bridging between the basics of a programming language and interacting with the Internet in fun new ways. You'll experience the quirks and details of working with numbers in Python, by using it like a calculator; also using variables, like in a graphing calculator. All toward a simple demo in which we convert bike wheels between standard and metric measures.

Course Summary & Honors: Interactive Demo

The main reason to take this course are the demos. In the honor's section demo you will use Python to treat Google Translate like a toy, learning how to say one phrase in over 100 languages, and also taking simple phrases and watching them change by translating them back and forth.