Context: First Two Modules of CSE 163
Contents
Context: First Two Modules of CSE 163#
Tip
In addition to these readings, I will also be recording short videos of me walking through the content of the reading. I don’t always have time to go through every single detail in the reading, so the reading should still be your primary source for course content. Students in the past reported that they liked having the videos for commentatry and context.
The videos are optional, and all required content is in the reading itself. You can listen to the video as you go along, or just do the reading on it’s own. Whatever you prefer!
In the first two modules, you will be learning a lot of new tools and many of you are learning Python for the first time! But our hope is that this deliberate practice we are setting up will make this transition easier! As a reminder, this course is designed for those that already have learned programming in some other language, and are interested in learning Python for data programming. This means we will assume you know concepts like if statements and loops, but you might not know the stuff you need to type to make those work in Python.
At UW, the prequisites are either a Java programming class (CSE 142) or a Python programming class (CSE 160). So you will see a lot of our discussion going around the fact that students coming into our course will either know Java or Python.
Learning Python and Data Programming#
If you took your first programming course in Java (at UW, this is CSE 142): This module (and part of next) will be learning almost all of the things you already learned in that course but in Python. It can be challenging and confusing at first, but we promise it gets better as you practice!
Tip
Most importantly, try to relate what you’re learning this week back to Java . Almost all of these ideas are ones you’ve seen before (e.g. an if statement), but have a different syntax to write them in Python.
If you took your first programming course in Python (at UW, this is CSE 160): This module and next will be lots of reviews. We promise that by the start of the next module you will see some more complex data processing than you’ve seen in in that course! For Module 3 and beyond, everything will be brand new to you!
Course Overview#
Check out the introduction to this book to get an overview of what you will learn in this course.