The Waterfall by Henri Rousseau, 1910

This directory contains code used for a introductory Python course I am teaching at the library. The exercises are intended to "kick-off" someone's coding journey, not provide a comprehensive overview or even a foundational understanding of computer science principles. I'll leave that to the learner.

Also, I'm definitely not the person who should be teaching computer science concepts. You wouldn't learn to fly a plane from an inexperienced pilot, would you?

It begins with a "Hello world!" program (as is tradition) and ends with a basic transposition cipher, all in Python. I also cover some basic cryptography terms just for the sake of whimsy, because what is more fun than cryptography? Nothing. (Maybe basketball.)

• Exercise 1: Hello world

  • first function, defining variables, tripping errors

• Exercise 2: Arithmetic stuff? Variable types?

  • variable types, type() function, operators, standard functions

• Exercise 3: Conditional statements

  • if-else, while, input() function, type conversion

• Exercise 4: Defining functions

  • user-defined functions, calling functions, flow control
  • with some jazz: importing modules, calling functions from imported modules, if name == 'main'

• Exercise 5: Lists

  • arrays, indexing, type conversions

• Exercise 6: Transposition cipher

  • cryptography concepts, for and while loops, passing variables to functions

• Exercise 7: Hashing passwords

  • culmination project, real application, bytes() function