Class 1: Tuesday, September 3rd

• Course Description
• This Course Requires Work
• Texts
• Unix Account
• Programming Assignments
• Course Work
• Software Needed for the Course
• Laptops
• Phones
• Attendance
• Recorded Class Meetings
• Course Documents
• Grading Policy
• Exams and Your Grade
• Late Work
• Email Notification
• Gradescope
• If You Fall Behind See Me
• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
• Accommodations for Disabilities
• Classroom Behavior
• Academic Integrity
• Reputation
• Academic Honesty
• Honesty Expected In This Class
• What Happens If You Are Caught Cheating?
• Use of Artificial Intelligence Programs
• Class Discussion Area
• Class Assistant
• Making the Class Interesting
• Taking Notes
• The Most Important Thing to Learn in This Class
• Learn to Read Carefully
• Who Am I
• Do You Have Enough Time to Do the Work for This Course?
• Your Mental Health
• Getting Enough Sleep
• Office Hours
• Academic Support Programs
• Other UMB Services
• Contacting Me
• First Class Exercise
• First Homework Assignment

Class 2: Thursday, September 5th

• Assignments
• Submitting Assignments
• Working on Assignments
• Software for the Class
• Class Assistant
• Files
• Directories (Folders)
• Working With Files
• Your Unix Course Directory
• Types of Programming Languages
• Python
• Downloading Python
• Running IDLE
• Syntax Highlighting
• Creating a Python Script
• Running a Script in IDLE
• Changing a Python Script
• Two Ways to Run Python
• Python in Class Exercises
• Running Python in Interactive Mode
• Python on Unix
• Scripts versus Interactive Mode
• Using FileZilla
• Today's Class Exercise

Class 3: Tuesday, September 10th

• Some Skills Only Come With Work
• Class Exercises
• Getting Help
• Describing a Problem
• Don't Use Screenshots in Piazza
• Output
• Literals
• Strings and String Literals
• Triple Quotes
• Characters
• ASCII
• Unicode
• Representing Unicode Values
• Ranges of Characters in ASCII
• Variables
• Creating Variables with Assignment Statements

Class 4: Thursday, September 12th

• Creating Directories with FileZilla
• Keeping Your Scripts Organized
• Using FileZilla to Fix Problems
• Use Flash Cards to Prepare for Graded Quizzes
• Expressions
• Comments
• Variable Naming Rules
• Choosing Good Variable Names
• Printing Multiple Values
• Numeric Data Types and Literals
• Why You Need to Know About Data Types
• Conversion Functions
• Reading Input from the Keyboard
• Reading Numbers with the input Function

Class 5: Tuesday, September 17th

• Importance of Exams
• Preparing for Exams
• Do Not Fall Behind in This Course
• Read the Homework Assignments Carefully
• Performing Calculations
• Decimal and Integer Division
• Exponent Operator
• Remainder Operator
• Operator Precedence
• Grouping with Parentheses
• Mixed-Type Expressions and Data Type Conversion
• Breaking Long Statements into Multiple Lines
• Expressions inside Expressions
• Converting Algebra Into Python
• Turning a Formula into a Python Program

Class 6: Thursday, September 19th

• Converting Decimal to Integer
• More Expressions inside Expressions
• Whitespace Characters
• Escape Sequences
• Concatenation Operator
• Concatenating Strings with Numbers
• Using print without Going to a New Line
• print Item Separator
• F-strings
• Printing Numbers
• Format Specifiers in F-strings
• Using Format Specifiers with Scientific Notation
• Using Format Specifiers to Put Commas in Big Numbers
• Specifying Minimum Length for a Number
• Alignment with the format Function
• Formating Percentages
• Order of F-string Designators

Class 7: Tuesday, September 24th

• Collecting and Testing Assignments
• Notifying You About Missing Work
• Late Work
• Help with Assignments
• No Appointment Needed For Office Hours
• What You Need to Remember
• Line Numbers In IDLE
• Control Structures
• Two Types of Control Structures
• if Statements
• Boolean Expression
• Relational Operators
• Precedence of Relational Operators
• if-else Statements
• Indentation in the if-else Statement
• Comparing Strings
• Nested if Statements
• Testing a Series of Conditions
• if-elif-else Statements

Class 8: Thursday, September 26th

• Use Tabs in a Code Block
• Misleading Error Messages
• Logical Operators
• Short-Circuit Evaluation
• Checking Numeric Ranges with Logical Operators
• Precedence of Logical Operators
• Boolean Variables
• Keep Your Code Short

Class 9: Tuesday, October 1st

• Comments
• Don't Use Whitespace at the Beginning of a Line
• Converting Results to Integer
• Use Spaces before and after =
• Loops
• while Loops
• Testing Variables in While Loops
• Infinite Loops
• Data Validation
• Data Validation Loops
• An Improved Data Validation Loop
• An Example of Input Validation
• Compound Statements

Class 10: Thursday, October 3rd

• The for Loop in Python
• for Loops in Other Languages
• for Loops
• The range Function
• Setting the First and Last Values with range
• Changing the Increment with range
• Reversing the range Values
• Why Does Python Have the range function?
• for Loops that Don't Use the Loop Value
• Nested Loops
• Totaling Numbers with a for Loop
• Finding the Average with a for Loop
• Only Two Loops in Python

Class 11: Tuesday, October 8th

• Studying for the Midterm with Flashcards
• Getting Your First IT Job
• Keep In Contact
• A Common Error
• Calculating a Running Total
• Augmented Assignment Operators
• Calculating Averages
• Sentinels
• Functions
• Using Functions in Writing Programs
• Two Types of Functions
• Function Names
• Defining a Function
• Calling a Function

Class 12: Thursday, October 10th

• Studying for the Midterm with Flashcards
• Additional Rules for Homework Scripts Using Functions
• The pass Statement
• How the Python Interpreter Runs a Script
• Layout Rules for Functions
• Functions in Scripts
• Top Down Design
• Example of Top Down Design
• The Advantages of Isolation
• Specifying the Work for a Function
• Keep It Simple
• Running Programs and the Operating System
• How the Interpreter Uses Process Memory
• Parameters
• Local Variables
• Parameters Are Local Variables

Class 13: Tuesday, October 15th

• Script Requirements for Functions
• Studying for the Midterm with Flashcards
• Make Sure You Body Code is Not Indented
• The Two Parts of a Function Definition
• Formatting Functions for This Course
• Default Values for Parameters
• Named Arguments
• Global Variables
• Variable Shadowing
• Global Constants
• Pausing Execution of a Script
• Functions that Return Values
• Returning Multiple Values
• Standard Library
• Calling a Module Function
• Creating Random Numbers
• The random Module
• Other random Functions
• Random Number Seeds

Class 14: Thursday, October 17th

• Studying for the Midterm with Flashcards

Class 16: Thursday, October 24th

• Do Not Change the Test Code in Homework Scripts
• Scripts and Functions Need Comments
• Don't Comment the Obvious
• Returning Values That Are Not Numbers
• Boolean Functions and Data Validation
• Storing Functions in Modules
• Incremental Development
• An Example of Incremental Development
• Rock, Paper, Scissors - Step 1
• Rock, Paper, Scissors - Step 2
• Rock, Paper, Scissors - Step 3
• Rock, Paper, Scissors - Step 4
• Rock, Paper, Scissors - Step 5
• Refactoring

Class 17: Tuesday, October 29th

• Common Exam Mistake - Using Input in Functions
• Never Assume Your Code Works
• Files
• Types of Files
• Identifying a File
• Storing Data on a Hard Disk
• Files and the Kernel
• Working with a File in Python
• Objects
• Accessing the Data in Files
• Opening a File
• Specifying the Location of a File
• Writing Data to a File
• Reading Data From a File

Class 18: Thursday, October 31st

• Reading a File Line By Line
• Getting Rid of Newline Characters
• Writing and Reading Numbers
• Using Loops to Process Files
• Reading Files with while and readline
• Reading Files with a for Loop

Class 19: Tuesday, November 5th

• A Simple Function
• Don't Use readline() in a for Loop
• Running a Script Using python3
• Making a Script Executable
• Why Make a Script Executable?
• Making Scripts Executable with FileZilla
• Averaging the Numbers in a File
• Records
• Reading Records from a File
• Finding the Average From a File of Records
• Additional Processing of Records
• Closing a File Object
• Looping Through a File More Than Once

Class 20: Thursday, November 7th

• Reading Text Files With Python Scripts
• Making a Script Executable With FileZilla
• Hashbang Problem with Windows Text Files
• More Data Processing in a Loop
• Errors
• Syntax Errors
• Logic Errors
• Runtime Errors
• Exceptions Objects
• Catching Exceptions
• Exceptions and Data Validation
• Improving the Validation Function

Class 21: Tuesday, November 12th

• Don't Create a File Object When Given One as a Parameter
• Don't Use Code You Copied from Google
• The Code in the try Clause
• Different Exception Types
• Common Exception Types
• Handling More Than One Type of Exception
• Using the Data in Exception Objects
• The else Clause
• The finally Clause

Class 22: Thursday, November 14th

• All Scripts Must Be Executable
• Working with Collections of Data
• Sequences
• Lists
• The list Function
• Using a for Loop with Lists
• Empty Lists
• The len Function
• Creating Lists from Files

Class 23: Tuesday, November 19th

• Operators That Work on Objects
• Concatenating Lists
• The Repetition Operator
• Indexing
• Changing Elements Using Indexes
• Slices
• Leaving Out Indexes in a Slice
• Skipping Elements in a Slice
• The in Operator
• List Methods
• The append Method
• The pop Method
• The index Method
• The insert Method
• The sort Method
• The reverse Method
• The del Statement
• The min and max Functions

Class 24: Thursday, November 21st

• Don't Use Indexes to Print a List
• Time for Computer Operations
• Reading a File into a List
• Advantages of Using Lists with Files
• Problems with Copying Objects
• Copying Lists
• Functions That Return Lists
• Functions That Return Objects
• Functions That Work with Lists
• Functions That Change Lists