Intro to Python

By Victor K Miclovich
Research scientist, AlViHe 1
 A taste of what programmers do
• Website development
• Database management systems
• Artificial intelligence
• Game development
• Security (crypto)
• Information systems (e-commerce, e-business, e-
banking, etc.)
• Software application development
• Systems development and design

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 Places to work
• IS giants:
– Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.
• Software development
– As a freelance developer
– Contract developer
• Microsoft, Open source (Linux), etc.
• World wide opportunities in research b’se the
world is a global village and work can be got easily

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 IS – Information Systems
• A way in which information can be stored,
organized, and distributed to effect
management decisions at an organization
– You could design search engines, effective
websites, good databases, etc.

• Google, for example, is expanding and has an Africa

office in Kenya and currently in the stage of setting up
one in Uganda

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 Freelance developer

• To be able to work on various projects to earn

a “living” that appears to be quite luxurious
and very educational b’se you face many
problems in line of duty

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 Website development
• Use of open source to develop websites (the
world economy is becoming even more
electronic as each day passes)
– Be able to work with primitive languages like
HTML and XML; others like MySQL, Python, Perl,
Jscript, PHP, and many others
– Its quite an exciting experience

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 Artificial intelligence/intelligent
systems
• To develop systems with very enhanced features to boost
productivity of applications and hardware (machines like
robots, factory expert systems)

– Involves a strong mathematical background

– Good problem solving skills
– Excellent programming skills
– Knowledge of some cognitive science (of the brain)
– Be well-versed with algorithms and data structures
– A team player; projects aren’t done by one person alone

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 Game devl’pt
• Design of both 2-D and 3-D games for devices
like play station, Xbox, slotting machines, etc

• Computer graphics

• Intelligence involved in game code!

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 Crypto or security
• Should be able to design safe applications
aware from cyber-criminals like crackers

• Be able to control complex viruses that affect

mostly hardware performance and that are
hidden; known as crypto-viruses b’se of their
ability to hide in software systems

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 Job opportunities
• The list is endless, but the previous slides are
just to show you just the tip of the ice-berg,
there are a vast number of things a computer
scientist (a.k.a programmer) can do; so
specialize to avoid a PHD (Permanent H***
D****e)

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 Class details
• This is a fully practical course
– Entails a lot of programming work
– Personal reading, advisable!!!
– Extensive research and comparison with other
languages
• Over 20 lectures + assignments; this is an
easy class, so no worries!!

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 Goal
Use Python to create something useful
Examples:
• Simulate a natural/engineering process
• Manipulate files/PDFs
• Draw pretty graphics
• And many more…

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 Why Python?
• Simpler syntax for beginning programmers
• A growing interest and support community
• Many online publications and support
• Is supported by many platforms: Mac OS,
Windows™, Linux, Solaris…
• It is interoperable
• Has an extensive library
• It is a very powerful language

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 Some subtle differences
• A comparison with C and Java
– The hello world program
Description:
It prints out a string of characters: “Hello
world”

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 Hello.c
#include <stdio.h>
int main ()
{
printf(“hello world \n”);
}

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 Hello.py

print “hello world”

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 Hello.java

class Hello{
public static void main(String[] args){
//Program executions starts here
System.out.println(“Hello world.”);
}
}

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 What the previous slides show?
• The degree of complexity in writing just a
simple program

• The level of work

• How easy it is to make a mistake, and yet this

is the easiest program: Hello

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 Intro begins now!!! ☺

What is a programming language?

These are a set of rules (vocabulary and grammatical) that are

used to instruct a computer to perform specific tasks such as
computational operations such as addition, subtraction, file
reading, and so on

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 The two languages
• Natural languages

• Formal languages

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 Natural languages
• Simply stated; these are languages used by
human beings in their daily interactions
Examples:
English, Luganda, French, Swahili, etc.

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 Formal languages
• Languages that are made up in order to abstract or mimic a natural
process or even an engineering process.
Examples include:
From Chemistry: CO2, H2O… chemists tend to understand that
π

∫
2
1 tan x
From Math: ∫ sin (x + cos x ),
2 π
, etc.
0
4

From Programming: Python, Java, C syntax:

- keywords (or tokens): def, define, class, public, void, etc.
The things programmers tend to understand
 Formal languages are also artificial languages; they don’t evolve like
natural languages

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 Characteristics of programming languages

• Have the following:

– Syntax rules
– Semantic rules
– Structure (data structure/types)

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 syntax
• Refers to the grammatical rules of a programming
language such when to start a statement (similar to
sentence in natural languages)

• In python, for example, a program is given a name

definition using the keyword def
• We’ll meet more of that later

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 semantics
• This refers to the meaning (mostly logical) of a
program when it is written

• The meaning should be easily understood by a

programmer

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 Types of high-level programming
languages
• Interpreted

• compiled

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 Interpreted languages
• Read (and translates) lines of code while simultaneously executing
code (or instructions)
• The written code (by programmer) is called the source code
• The result (after running program) is called the output

Figure 1.0

The source code you type is processed by a program, called the

interpreter, to produce an output

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 Compiled languages
• A compiled language translates all the source code (at once) into an
executable code (also called object code) which can be executed at a
later time

Figure 1.1

• The compiler translates source code into object code

• The executable can then be passed through an executor which

evaluates expression (or your program) and gives an output

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 Then what is python?
• Python is an interpreted object-oriented
programming language

• Other interpreted languages are LISP,

MIT/SCHEME, LIMBO, Java exhibits both
compilation and interpretation as will be seen
later

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 Other salient features of Python™
• Python has got two modes of operation:
– Script mode
– Normal/interactive mode

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Interactive mode
The interactive mode is
shown in figure 1.2
defined by the symbol
>>>

The interactive mode can

be used to immediately see
the result of certain input
such as statements and
computations

We shall see more of

this!

Figure 1.2

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 Script mode
The script mode produces a clean
work space with no interactive
capabilities; so you won’t see the
output or result of your program
unless you save it as a *.py file and
run it (F5)

Python scripts (or text files) must have

a .py extension otherwise they won’t
run and execute easily

Figure 1.3

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 What is programming?
• Programming is merely giving a computer instructions

• Before programming, it is important that you should

know what it is you are trying to solve: know your
assignment before hand

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 Approaches used in programming
• Top-down approach:
– You understand what the program is supposed to do; its application
– You formulate a plan
– Gather requirements such as the input variables/values
– And what the program should give as an output when fed certain
input
– Next step usually involves splitting a large task into smaller tasks that
can easily be managed: this is the essence of an OOP

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 Your first program

print “hello world”

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In the Interactive mode

Take a few shots; write the

program!!!

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Type your program;
Saving
print “hello world”
the
program

Type
file
name

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Step before the final step

Running the
program!

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Results!!!!

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What Next?

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References:
http://www.python.org

Think like a computer scientist, Learning with Python. Allen D, et. al

Green Tea press

Assignment:
Read from chapters 1 to 4
Next lecture briefly covers detail of these chapters

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