Coursera has a free course available. Virtual classroom with homework on a schedule as well. Starts October 7th and is 9 weeks long. It's put on by professors at Rice University.
Personally I'm a beginner here and I have the official docs, reddit.com/r/learnpython, python programming for the absolute beginner and head first books as my go-tos. I find I get bored with certain content and the selection I mentioned really mixes it up. The above route may be what you want for your size. On another note I just recently applied for the UW Continuing Education Python Certificate program. Crossing my fingers there. -Luke On Jul 16, 2013, at 3:35 AM, Pat Tressel <[email protected]> wrote: > Chad -- > > I've been looking for Python training materials online for some time, and > have not found anything very good. The (very large) LinkedIn Python group > has repeatedly discussed online resources, and also come away unsatisfied, to > the point where a whole bunch of folks offered to help write a good tutorial > and reference. Unfortunately, that died out when the person who initiated > the project went silent... The verdict of the LinkedIn Python folks was that > the various online books each have some quirk that renders them not truly > Pythonic, or include ways of doing things that folks considered incorrect. I > or my students have sampled the online Python courses, and found them boring > or buggy or incomplete or intended to teach generic programming, not Python. > For instance, normally, I like Udacity a lot, but the Udacity cs100 course > spends *five segments* on string quoting and syntax. IMO that should take > five *seconds* -- one sentence, and done. One of my young students tried out > the CodeAcademy Python course, and said the interactive tutorial UI didn't > work correctly. He showed me what they were having him do, and it too looked > boring. So we dropped that and instead I had him write a "guess the > randomly-selected number within a range" game -- let him pick the features > and how it should interact with the player. With no CS training (other than > 8 weeks of Scratch programming we'd just finished), when I asked, how should > the player choose their guesses to get to the right number in the fewest > guesses, he spontaneously came up with binary search! > > I would like to recommend Nick Parlante's video tutorials, but it looks like > the version that's been released publicly is the one for relatively > inexperienced programmers, so it might be too elementary: > > https://developers.google.com/edu/python/ > > There was a shorter version aimed at C++/Java devs that was trialed inside > Google, but one could just go through the above material more quickly. It > doesn't intend to teach more than the basics though -- people were expected > to pick up whatever else they needed on their own. > >> * Introduction to Python (for experienced developers) >> * Reading and writing technical data (HDF, NetCDF, MATLAB) >> * NumPy >> * SciPy with focus on signal processing > > You may also want Pandas: > > http://pandas.pydata.org/ > > The author of Pandas has a well-regarded book: > > http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023784.do > > which is available online via Seattle Public Library, IIRC. > > Since I'm only just starting to do data analysis with Python, I'm not an > appropriate instructor candidate -- I'd only be learning just ahead of the > students... > >> * Interfacing with C and Fortran >> * Data visualizations (matplotlib and beyond) > > -- Pat
