Suitability
This intensive course provides a basic introduction to the principles
and practices of computer programming. It is aimed at PhD students and
other researchers who need to write programs for their research. It
assumes little or no prior experience of programming and will not be
suitable for those who have programmed extensively.
The programming language used in the course is Python - a modern, very
high level language notable for having a particularly clean and readable
syntax. Python is very popular in schools and universities worldwide as
a first programming language, but it is also a highly practical and
effective problem-solving tool, used widely in science and engineering
applications where speed of development is considered more important
than very high performance.
You can find out more about Python athttp://www.python.org
You can find out more about the software environment used in the course
athttps://store.continuum.io/cshop/anaconda
|
Date(s)
Wednesday, July 23, 2014, 10:00 to 16:00
Thursday, July 24, 2014, 10:00 to 16:00
Friday, July 25, 2014, 10:00 to 16:00
Monday, July 28, 2014, 10:00 to 16:00
Tuesday, July 29, 2014, 10:00 to 16:00
|
Description
Python is a very high-level language noted for having a particularly
clean, readable syntax. Its high-level nature makes it ideal for rapid
development; professional programmers frequently report four- or five-
fold increases in productivity relative to lower-level languages like C,
C++ and Java.
Python is used extensively by Google and is the language that powers
YouTube, along with many other ‘Web 2.0’ sites. At Industrial Light &
Magic, Python is the glue that binds together the many different
software tools required to create CGI effects for major Hollywood
movies. Nokia support it as a development platform for their Series 60
mobile phones. There is rapidly growing interest in the use of Python
for science and engineering applications; it is used by NASA for shuttle
mission planning, by the Los Alamos National Laboratory for controlling
and analysing the results from large-scale physics simulations, and by
the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute as the basis of a
system for weather radar data analysis and visualisation.
Python is more than likely a good fit for your needs but its relative
slowness compared to C or C++ might become noticeable if your work is
very demanding computationally, or if you work with extremely large
datasets. Fortunately, it is not too difficult to combine Python with
faster languages like C, using the latter for the most demanding parts
of a task.
This course runs over five days over a two-week period. It is aimed at
PhD students who need to begin learning a programming language for their
research project.
The course uses Python, a language that is reasonably easy to learn but
also very highly regarded as a practical problem solving tool in many
different domains (see the discussion ‘Which Programming Language Should
I Learn?’, overleaf). The course uses free, opensource Python
development tools that are available for all common platforms.
Please note if you have no prior experience of Linux you may find it
useful to attend the Introduction to UNIX course before this course.
|
