Learn Python: A Free Online Course from Google

Google has cre­at­ed a free Python class designed for “peo­ple with a lit­tle bit of pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence who want to learn Python.” A for­tu­nate thing since Python is a com­put­er lan­guage that’s now strong­ly in demand. (By the way, did you know that Python takes its name from Mon­ty Python? A true sto­ry.)

Accord­ing to Google’s course descrip­tion:

The class includes “writ­ten mate­ri­als, lec­ture videos, and lots of code exer­cis­es to prac­tice Python cod­ing. These mate­ri­als are used with­in Google to intro­duce Python to peo­ple who have just a lit­tle pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence. The first exer­cis­es work on basic Python con­cepts like strings and lists, build­ing up to the lat­er exer­cis­es which are full pro­grams deal­ing with text files, process­es, and http con­nec­tions. The class is geared for peo­ple who have a lit­tle bit of pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence in some lan­guage, enough to know what a “vari­able” or “if state­ment” is. Beyond that, you do not need to be an expert pro­gram­mer to use this mate­r­i­al.

This mate­r­i­al was cre­at­ed by Nick Par­lante work­ing in the engE­DU group at Google. Google’s Python class will be added to our list of Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

For any­one inter­est­ed in an intro­duc­to­ry pro­gram­ming course that uses Python, see: Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­er Sci­ence and Pro­gram­ming: A Free Course from MIT.

Oth­er out­fits offer­ing free instruc­tion in Python include Udac­i­ty, Codecad­e­my, and Cours­era.

If you’re look­ing for a gen­er­al­ly well-reviewed text­book, con­sid­er Learn­ing Python, 5th edi­tion (from O’Reil­ly Media.

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