Welcome to Commonlounge’s Python Class. This is a 22-part course which will teach you Python 2 from scratch. It’s designed to be very hands-on and will walk you through every step of the process. You don’t need to have any previous knowledge of programming or Python!

The first few tutorials work on basic Python concepts like strings and lists, along with quizzes to check your understanding. As you get to the middle of the course and start learning about loops and functions, you’ll see a lot more coding exercises. Towards the end of the course, you’ll be dealing with text files, processes, and http connections, and start writing full programs. This course includes 50+ practice problems, 20+ coding exercises and 2 projects.

Python version: Python 2 (usually 2.6.x / 2.7.x)

Related courses: If you’d like to learn Python3 (recommended if you are a complete beginner), see Learn Python3.

Expected time to completion: 3-4 weeks if you make progress everyday, and 2 months if you come back 3-4 times per week.

This course makes use of content from Django Girls’ python tutorial and Google’s Python class. Significant changes have been made to make the course coherent, in-depth (the course is not ‘watered down’) and beginner friendly (you don’t need previous programming background).

Set-up and Installation

In this section, we’ll guide you through installing Python and installing a code editor (for writing Python code). We’ll also introduce you to the command line interface (for running Python code, and launching Python in interactive mode).

• Code Editor
• Introduction to the Command-line Interface
• Python Set Up

Getting started with Python programming

The first few tutorials work on basic Python concepts like strings and lists, along with quizzes to check your understanding. Towards the end of the section, you’ll learn about more involved topics like loops and functions, and do a lot of coding exercises.

• Python Basics: Numbers, Strings and Functions
• Python: Variables, Lists and Dictionaries
• Python: If Statements and Comments
• Python: Functions and Loops

Going deeper into Python programming

In this section, we’ll go into much more depth for some of the topics you learnt in the previous section, such as strings, lists, loops and dictionaries. You’ll also deal with file input-output, python modules, command-line arguments, regular expressions and HTTP connections. Apart from more coding exercises, you’ll write full programs.

• Python Modules and Command-line execution
• Python Strings
• Python Lists and Loops
• Python Sorting and File input-output
• Python Dictionaries and Tuples
• Python Regular Expressions
• Python Utilities