Courses

Computers run the world—only by switching electronic signals on and off. How is this possible? In this course, we will answer this question and enable you to make computers do exactly what you want. We will start by examining how information may be represented digitally (as numbers), and then study a rough outline of how computers are constructed and how they manipulate such information. Armed with this background knowledge, we will learn how to write a computer program, that is, how to instruct the computer about what we want it to do. We will use a programming language called Python, which is reasonably simple, but still very powerful and flexible. After learning the most important syntax (grammar) of the language, we will look at various ways of applying programming, based on what the class would like to do—possibilities include graphics, games, web pages, and algorithms. The goal of this course is to convey a solid understanding of the underlying programming concepts, rather than to teach as much Python syntax as possible. This course will be a good foundation for people who wish to continue programming on their own—even in languages other than Python.