Learn to Program in Five Days

Course Description

This course is a whirlwind introduction to programming in Python. No programming experience is expected or required. By the end of the week, students will be able to design, execute, and debug their own code. Students will gain basic knowledge of programming skills, which is starter for computer science and also a very useful skill for other majors such as engineering and data science.

The goal of this course is to learn how to program using Python, a highly popular, easy-to-learn programming language. Though the course is fast-paced, it assumes no background whatsoever. Students will gain mastery of basic building blocks of programming: object-assignments, conditional statements, built-in-functions, iterative and recursive loops, function definitions, and more.

There will be programming assignments every night of the week. Based on the performance of students, a final project may be assigned to help students gain better understanding of programming.

The programming experience gained here will be invaluable to students that wish to pursue computer science in college. Also, it will also be helpful for the preparation for other majors since programming is almost a necessary skill in lots of majors nowadays. As with spoken languages, one's experience with a given programming language can make it easier to pick up others.

Prerequisites: Algebra II.

*For 1 week course sections scheduled for June 29 - July 2, 2020: Classes will not meet on Friday, July 3rd due to the observed Independence Day holiday. Due to the brevity of the course, meeting times have been adjusted accordingly Monday - Thursday to preserve in-class hours. We encourage students to remain on campus through Friday as our Campus Life team will be fully engaged with our students, offering a variety of activities.