Python: Automate the Boring Stuff

Prerequisites:

• No programming experience is required.
• Basic computer skills: surfing websites, running programs, saving and opening documents, etc.

Audience

• Non-programmers wishing to learn programming with Python
• Professionals and company teams wishing to optimize their office productivity
• Managers wishing to automate tedious processes and workflows

Overview:

This instructor-led, live training is based on the popular book, "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python", by Al Sweigart. It is aimed at beginners and covers essential Python programming concepts through practical, hands-on exercises and discussions. The focus is on learning to write code to dramatically increase office productivity.

By the end of this training, participants will know how to program in Python and apply this new skill for:

• Automating tasks by writing simple Python programs.
• Writing programs that can do text pattern recognition with "regular expressions".
• Programmatically generating and updating Excel spreadsheets.
• Parsing PDFs and Word documents.
• Crawling web sites and pulling information from online sources.
• Writing programs that send out email notifications.
• Use Python's debugging tools to quickly resolve bugs.
• Programmatically controlling the mouse and keyboard to click and type for you.

Format of the course

• Part lecture, part discussion, exercises and heavy hands-on practice

Course Outline:

Introduction to Python

Controlling the flow of your program

Working with lists

Working with the dictionary data type

Manipulating strings

Pattern matching with regular expressions

Reading, writing and managing files

Debugging your code

Pulling information from the internet (web scraping)

Working with Excel, Word, and PDF Documents

Working with CSV and JSON

Keeping time

Scheduling tasks

Launching programs

Sending emails and other messages

Manipulating images

GUI Automation

Closing remarks