• Post category:StudyBullet-7
  • Reading time:8 mins read


A practical programming course for office workers, academics, and administrators who want to improve their productivity.

What you will learn

Automate tasks on their computer by writing simple Python programs.

Write programs that can do text pattern recognition with “regular expressions”.

Programmatically generate and update Excel spreadsheets.

Parse PDFs and Word documents.

Crawl web sites and pull information from online sources.

Write programs that send out email notifications.

Use Python’s debugging tools to quickly figure out bugs in your code.

Programmatically control the mouse and keyboard to click and type for you.

Description

If you’re an office worker, student, administrator, or just want to become more productive with your computer, programming will allow you write code that can automate tedious tasks. This course follows the popular (and free!) book, Automate the Boring Stuff with Python.

Automate the Boring Stuff with Python was written for people who want to get up to speed writing small programs that do practical tasks as soon as possible. You don’t need to know sorting algorithms or object-oriented programming, so this course skips all the computer science and concentrates on writing code that gets stuff done.


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This course is for complete beginners and covers the popular Python programming language. You’ll learn basic concepts as well as:

  • Web scraping
  • Parsing PDFs and Excel spreadsheets
  • Automating the keyboard and mouse
  • Sending emails and texts
  • And several other practical topics

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to write code that not only dramatically increases your productivity, but also be able to list this fun and creative skill on your resume.

English
language

Content

Python Basics

Get Python Installed
Just a check in.
Basic Terminology and Using IDLE
Writing Our First Program

Flow Control

Flow Charts and Basic Flow Control Concepts
If, Else, and Elif Statements
While Loops
For Loops

Functions

Python’s Built-In Functions
Writing Your Own Functions
Global and Local Scopes

Handling Errors with try/except

Try and Except Statements

Writing a Complete Program: Guess the Number

Writing a “Guess the Number” Program

Lists

The List Data Type
For Loops with Lists, Multiple Assignment, and Augmented Operators
List Methods
Similarities Between Lists and Strings

Dictionaries

The Dictionary Data Type
Data Structures

More About Strings

Advanced String Syntax
String Methods
String Formatting

Running Programs from the Command Line

Launching Python Programs from Outside IDLE

Regular Expressions

Regular Expression Basics
Regex Groups and the Pipe Character
Repetition in Regex Patterns and Greedy/Nongreedy Matching
Regex Character Classes and the findall() Method
Regex Dot-Star and the Caret/Dollar Characters
Regex sub() Method and Verbose Mode
Regex Example Program: A Phone and Email Scraper

Files

Filenames and Absolute/Relative File Paths
Reading and Writing Plaintext Files
Copying and Moving Files and Folders
Deleting Files
Walking a Directory Tree

Debugging

The raise and assert Statements
Logging
Using the Debugger

Web Scraping

The webbrowser Module
Downloading from the Web with the Requests Module
Parsing HTML with the Beautiful Soup Module
Controlling the Browser with the Selenium Module

Excel, Word, and PDF Documents

Reading Excel Spreadsheets
Editing Excel Spreadsheets
Reading and Editing PDFs
Reading and Editing Word Documents

Email

Sending Emails
Checking Your Email Inbox

GUI Automation

Controlling the Mouse from Python
Controlling the Keyboard from Python
Screenshots and Image Recognition
Congratulations! (And next steps…)