• Use the basics of the Python language
• Apply Testing strategies and understand the rationale of these
• Apply Concurrency and Parellism
• Write GUI's for event-driven systems
• Explain the concepts of networking in Python
• Use XML for Processing
• Incorporate Persistence
• Develop dynamic Python systems with DSL's
• Use Python extensions and test them
• Write small- to medium-sized programs using modules and packages
• Read and amend other people's Python code and, most importantly, explore more Python techniques and idioms for yourself

Introduction

• Introduction
• Some background to Python
• Tools of the trade

Language basics

• Value, types, expressions, and statements
• Lists, tupes, and dictionaries
• Functions
• Classes
• Files, modules, directories and packages

Testing

• Rationale and strategies
• Tools, techniques and approaches
• PyUnit (aka unittest) and PyTest (aka py.test)
• Test-driven development (TDD)

Concurrency and Parallelism

• Threads
• Threading
• Multiprocessing
• CSP
• Actors
• Dataflow

GUIs

• Event-driven systems
• GUI frameworks: PyGTK, PyQt, wxPython

Networking

• Concepts of networking
• Sockets
• Higher-level approaches
• Event-driven approaches
• Twisted Internet

XML Processing

• Concepts of XML documents
• SAX and DOM
• minidom
• ElementTree
• LXML

Persistence

• Files, pickling and shelving
• SQLite
• SQLAlchemy
• PyMongo

An example of a Python DSL

• SCons -- a build framework

Python Extensions

• Rationale and architecture
• ctypes
• SWIG
• C Python API
• Boost.Python
• Cython/Pyrex

Extension Testing

• C/C++ test frameworks vs. Python test frameworks

Django

• Web applications frameworks
• Using dynamic techniques