Events

Topic: Programming with Python
Date : Oct 31st and Nov 1st, 2009
Time : 9 am to 6 pm
Venue : BITS Goa
Instructors: Prabhu Ramachandran and Asokan P.

Intended audience:

College and University Teachers/Professors/Lecturers from any
Engineering or Science domain, and Engineering students who would
like to use Python for their basic computing and plotting needs.

Prerequisites:

Participants should be comfortable computer users and be familiar with
programming constructs such as loops, conditionals. Familiarity with
programming editors-- scite, notepad++, vi, emacs- will be a
plus. Familiarity with using the commandline will be another plus.

Objectives:

At the end of the program the participants will have a good
understanding of the Python language, and selected libraries. They
will be able to write good modular procedural code and use objects.
They will get a overview of the other major topics, features and
libraries and be able to learn these on their own if required.

Coverage:
* Motivation, background and design philosophy.
* Basic data types: int, float and string
* Core data structures: lists, tuples and dictionaries
* Functions
* Tool chain
* Overview of the standard library
* Matplotlib
* NumPy and Scipy
* 3D plotting
* Debugging and testing

Methodology:

Completely hands on, exploratory mode with minimal lectures
introducing essential concepts and techniques. Typically we will have
short 10-15 minute lectures, followed by series of graduated
problems. The participants will solve them exploring the documentation
to do so and the solutions will be discussed.

Laptops can be brought by participants, and additional
laptops/computers can be provided for use for those required. Charging
points will be available.

As far as installations go, you would require the following:

-- For Debian/ Ubuntu and the like:
(a) IPython
(b) Python doc
(c) the Python Profiler
(d) Scipy/Numpy
(e) Matplotlib
(f) Mayavi2

For Windows XP (x86), Windows Vista (x86), Mac OS X 10.4+ (x86),
RedHat 3 (x86, amd64), RedHat 4 (x86, amd64), RedHat 5 (x86, amd64),
and Solaris 10 (x86, amd64) :

(a) get the EPD (http://www.enthought.com/products/epd.php) bundle and
you'll have everything you need! This is available for free for those
in academia and others can utilize the free 30 day trial version for
now.

In any case, we will be providing live DVDs containing all the
required installations and some additional tools on site.