The popularity of Python as a programming language shows no sign of slowing down and it is now among the top 4 programming languages on the TIOBE Index Aug 2018. [TIOBE index is described as an indicator of the popularity of programming languages]

TIOBE Index for August 2018 (Source: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/)

This positive trend is being noted when a study dating back to 2014 revealed that Python was the most popular language for teaching introductory programming courses in the US.

Source: https://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/176450-python-is-now-the-most-popular-introductory-teaching-language-at-top-u-s-universities/fulltext

 

The applications of Python have been numerous. It has been used in game development, web development, data analysis & visualizations, machine learning, natural language processing, among others.

In April 2018, NTU Library launched the “An Introduction to Python Programming” weekly workshops which attracted many NTU staff, students and alumni. Most of the attendees were learning programming for the first time. In addition to these weekly workshops, the NTU community also has access to learning python programming through other platforms as well.

Did you know that Lynda.com offers a number of Python courses that are suitable for beginners? Lynda.com is freely available to the NTU Community via NTULearn.

To access LyndaCampus, log in to NTULearn, go to “Self-paced Learning” and click on the LyndaCampus link provided, or simply log in at this link.


Here are some recommended introductory Python courses:

Learning Python (Duration: 2 h 11 mins)
Link: https://bit.ly/2Pj0fEv
Description: Covers basic Python syntax, learn to work with dates and times, read and write files, and retrieve and parse HTML, JSON and XML data from the web

Python for Data Science Essential Training (Duration:  6h 32 mins)
Link: https://bit.ly/2NuVA1E
Description: Learn to use Python for data preparation and munging, data visualization (using Plot.ly), predictive analysis. This course also covers the use of Python to scrape the web (using Beautiful Soup) and capture your own data sets.

Learning Python for Data Science (Duration: 1h 6 mins)
Link: https://bit.ly/2wwuPmn
Description: An introduction to pandas. NumPy and SciPy for numerical processing, scientific programming and data exploration.

Learning Python with PyCharm (Duration: 2h 30 mins)
Link: https://bit.ly/2nOnqLg
Description: Learn Python programming with PyCharm, a one stop shop for all your development tool needs.

 

For more Python programming resources, check these other posts out.
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Student Assistant Queenie Tan contributed to this post.