Core Python Training

Throughout the course students will learn to write effective Python code using the most current and efficient features and techniques.

Working within in an engaging, hands-on learning environment, guided by our expert instructor, students will learn to:

• Understand the evolution, features, and real-time purpose of Python
• Install IDE and Text editors for creating and running Python scripts
• Create working Python scripts following best practices
• Discover python data types and use them appropriately
• Source code integration with a version control management tool (Git)
• Work with collections such as lists, tuples, dictionaries, and sets
• Use built-in functions and create custom functions with parameters and return types
• Understand Pythonic features such as comprehensions and iterators
• Work with dates, times, and calendars
• Read and write files with both text and binary data
• Gain familiarity with the standard library and its work-saving modules
• Search text with regular expressions
• Understand the essence of objects in Python and create classes in Python

• 1. Introduction to Python
• Installing Python 3.x
• Preparing to write Python
• Preparing to write a Python file (*.py) – Text Editors
• Executing a Python file
• Python Enhancement Proposals (PEPs)
• Python Statements and Control Flow
• Python Interpreter
• Overview of the Standard Library
• 2. Version Controlling Code with Git – Optional
• Overview of Git
• Git commands
• Set up a GitHub account
• GitHub essentials
• README course requirements
• How to Set up a repo
• Issue a Pull request
• How to use “Issues” for peer review
• 3. Basics of Programming
• Structure of a Python Program
• Functions and purpose of main()
• Arguments
• Command line parameters
• Built in Functions
• Simple print statements
• White spacing basic rules
• String Literal – Escape Sequences
• 4. Python Variables, Data Types and Operators
• Python Variables
• Naming Conventions & Rules
• Numeric Types – Integers and Floating points
• String
• Booleans
• Types as Objects
• Sequence Types
• Type conversion
• Mutable vs Immutable Objects
• Operators and Precedence / Arithmetic Expressions
• 5. String Types
• Generating Strings in Python
• Common String Methods
• Formatting String Output
• Printing and formatting strings
• Scripting with input()
• About raw_input()
• 6. Dates and times
• Working with dates and times
• Translating timestamps
• Parsing dates from text
• Formatting dates
• Calendar data
• 7. Lists & Tuples
• Lists
• Mixed Lists
• Common List Methods
• Other List Operations – CRUD operations
• Working with Tuples
• Immutable Tuples
• Shallow and deep copies of List and tuples
• Lists vs Tuples
• 8. Dictionaries and Sets
• An overview on and construction of dictionaries
• Keys and Values
• Dictionary Methods
• About sets
• Creating sets
• Working with sets
• Dictionaries vs Lists vs Tuples vs Sets
• 9. Operators and Conditional Statements
• Relational Operators
• Logical operators
• Comparison Operations
• “simple” if Statement
• If else statements
• If elif
• Nested if statement
• 10. Looping with “while”
• While usage
• Count controlled loop
• Event controlled loop
• Continue
• Break
• 11. Looping with “for”
• The for Loop
• For iteration examples
• Looping across data sets
• Looping across lists of lists
• Looping across lists of dictionaries
• 12. Understanding Iterators
• The range() function
• Taking the range() of len()
• Iterative Objects
• The iter() Function
• Iterating through a sequence
• Nested sequences
• Sequence functions, keywords, and operators
• Iterating through lists
• Looping with dictionaries
• 13. Sorting
• The sorted() function
• Alternate keys
• Sorting collections
• Using operator.itemgetter()
• Reverse sorting
• 14. Basic File operations in Python
• Opening files
• Read data from files
• Write data to files
• Reading and writing raw (binary) data
• 15. Python Functions
• Function Basics
• Defining functions
• Parameters
• Returning values
• Nested Functions
• Variable Masking
• Preventing Variable Modifications
• Argument Matching Methods
• Basic List Comprehensions
• 16. Python Scope
• Local scope
• Global scope
• Nested scope
• 17. Modules & Packages
• Module Basics
• Packages
• Pip and pip3
• Virtual environments
• Defined modules
• Import modules
• From import statements
• Some useful modules to know
• Functions and module aliases
• 18. Regular Expression
• Import re library
• Writing regular expression
• Searching for data in files
• 19. The standard library
• The sys module
• Launching external programs
• Math functions
• Random numbers
• Reading CSV data
• 20. Classes in Python
• About OOP
• Defining a class
• Constructor
• Classes instantiation
• Class variables and methods
• Instance variables
• Properties – getters and setters
• Subclasses (Inheritance)
• Multiple Inheritance
• Static methods

This course is an appropriate introduction to students of any background looking to get started with Python, including, but not limited to:

Programmers and developers who aspire to shift their career towards RPA/AI development or Data Science related projects which use Python as the core scripting language

• System Administrators/Network Administrators/DevOps Engineers
• Back-end/Front-end developers

It is helpful (but not essential) to have a basic familiarity with another programming or scripting language and a user-level knowledge of Unix/Linux, Mac, or Windows.

• Python for Network Automation
• Python for Reverse Engineers
• Threat Hunting with Python