Python Programming — Fundamentals & OOP

Python Programming at UiO. First formal introduction to programming — learning to think computationally and express that thinking in code.

Topics covered

Language fundamentals

• Variables, types (int, float, str, bool, None), and dynamic typing
• Operators: arithmetic, comparison, boolean (and/or/not)
• String operations: indexing, slicing, f-strings, .format(), common string methods
• Type conversion and input/output (input(), print())

Control flow

• if/elif/else — conditional execution
• for loops with range(), iterating over lists and strings
• while loops and loop control: break, continue, pass
• Nested loops and loop patterns

Data structures

• Lists — indexing, slicing, mutability, append, insert, pop, sort
• Tuples — immutable sequences, unpacking, use as dictionary keys
• Dictionaries — key-value store, .get(), .items(), .keys(), nested dicts
• Sets — uniqueness, union/intersection/difference operations

Functions

• def syntax, parameters vs arguments, return values
• Default parameters and keyword arguments
• Scope: local vs global variables, the global keyword (and why to avoid it)
• Recursion: factorial, Fibonacci, tree traversal

File I/O

• Reading and writing text files: open(), read(), readline(), readlines(), write()
• Context managers (with statement) for safe file handling
• CSV parsing with the csv module
• JSON serialisation with json.load() and json.dump()

Error handling

• try/except/else/finally
• Common exception types: ValueError, TypeError, FileNotFoundError, IndexError
• Raising custom exceptions with raise
• Writing defensive code vs handling failures gracefully

Modules and packages

• Importing standard library modules: math, random, datetime, os, sys
• Writing reusable modules and using if __name__ == '__main__'
• Installing third-party packages with pip

Object-oriented programming

• class definitions, __init__, instance attributes vs class attributes
• Methods: instance methods, class methods (@classmethod), static methods (@staticmethod)
• Inheritance and method overriding
• __str__, __repr__, __len__, __eq__ — dunder methods

Small projects

• Calculator with error handling
• Contact book: CRUD with dictionary storage and file persistence
• Simple text-based game with OOP
• Data analysis: reading CSV, computing statistics, writing summaries