Introduction to Python

John Alexis Guerra GómezCMSC433 Spring 2010University of Maryland

Definition

Python is an easy to learn, powerful programming language.

It has efficient high-level data structures and a simple but effective approach to object-oriented programming.

Python’s elegant syntax and dynamic typing, together with its interpreted nature, make it an ideal language for scripting and rapid application development in many areas on most platforms.

More definition

Python is cross platform (for many platforms). The standard library is huge, very useful, and is

very well documented. http://docs.python.org/library/

Many companies make significant use of it Google uses it for a lot of their internal software

projects David Bagget (speaking Tuesday) uses it in his start

up company

The Interactive mode

aguerra@eltiestico2:~$ python

Python 2.6.2 (release26-maint, Apr 19 2009, 01:56:41)

[GCC 4.3.3] on linux2

Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> print "Hola mundo"

Hola mundo

Working with a file

Save your file as hola.py Run it with

python hola.py

Basic types

• Numbers

• Strings

• Lists

• Tuples

• Maps

• Functions

Basic Data Types

Lists

Tuples

Dictionaries

Functions

Functional Programming

Lists Comprehension

From Java to Python

http://www.razorvine.net/python/PythonForJavaProgrammers

Google's developers Python Lecture

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKTZoB2Vjuk

Some other things

One of the things that I really like of Python is that you can use it for almost anything

You like video games

http://www.pygame.org http://home.gna.org/oomadness/en/soya3d/inde

x.html

Scientific Work

http://www.scipy.org/ http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/

Web developing

http://www.djangoproject.com/ http://turbogears.org/

Database Access

http://www.sqlobject.org/

GUI Development

http://www.wxpython.org/ http://www.pygtk.org/ http://wiki.python.org/moin/PyQt

Image manipulation

http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/

More

http://wiki.python.org/moin/UsefulModules