Itse1359-1000-preface

Table of contents

• Welcome
• Information about the course
  • Course description
  • Prerequisites
  • Course rationale
• Learning resources
  • General
  • Primary learning resources
• How to use this instructional material
• An editorial comment
• Reinforcing what you are learning
• Miscellaneous

Welcome

Welcome to the course material for ITSE 1359 Introduction to Scripting Languages: Python at Austin Community College in Austin, TX.

(Note to blind and visually impaired students: most of the material for this course is presented in plain text format and should beaccessible using an audio screen reader or a braille display. While there are a few bitmapped images that aren't accessible, that material will not be neededfor assignments or included on tests.)

Information about the course

Course description

As of September 2014, the description for this course reads as follows:

Introduction to scripting languages including basic data types, control structures, regular expressions, input/output, and textual analysis.

Prerequisites

One semester of programming or departmental approval.

Course rationale

This course is an introduction to scripting languages and Python. The purpose of the course is to prepare students for building scripts that control asequence of program steps such as those used in developing testing and deploying software. A modern scripting language, Python, is used as an example of ascripting language.

Learning resources

General

I have long been a proponent of free and open educational resources for college students. This version of this course does not require students topurchase printed textbooks. Instead the learning resources for the course consist of a large number of onlineresources arranged in the following major sections :

1. Language Fundamentals - Demonstrate the basic techniques used to create scripts for automating system administrative tasks.
2. Testing - Design, code, and test Python applications using Python doctests and unit testing tools.
3. Text processing - Demonstrate the use of string operations and regular expressions in processing text.
4. Networking and Databases - Demonstrate the use of Python in developing applications using networking and databases.

Primary learning resources

You are probably reading this document online at cnx.org , otherwise known as openstax cnx . As of October 2014, two views of the document are available: an openstax view and a legacy view. The material is the same in both views. Only the format and the top-level organization is different.

In the openstax view, the group of documents is referred to as a book and each document is referred to as a page .

In the legacy view, the group of documents is referred to as a collection and each document is referred to as a module .

You should not think of this book or this collection as a comprehensive tutorial on Python programming. Instead, you should think of it asan annotated guidebook to free online resources that constitute the primary learning resources for the course.