// introduction to computing · python

Programming Fundamentals

An introduction to programming in Python.

courseComp 102 termFall 2026 levelUndergraduate — first year

Course documents

full outline calendar exit ticket template PyLite editor View handin

The outline covers assessment weighting, learning outcomes and policies; the calendar is the same schedule shown below, as a printable PDF. The exit ticket template is the slip handed out in class — print your own if you need a spare. PyLite runs Python right in your browser — nothing to install; handy for finger exercises on a lab machine that doesn't have Thonny.

Course calendar

27 lectures · 15 weeks

slides opens a PDF in a new tab starter downloads a zip readings click to expand pending not yet posted EA1 extra activity: practice, not graded

Comp 102 weekly schedule, Fall 2026
Lec	Date	Topic & materials	Lab	Deliverable
1	Tue, 1 Sep	Introduction to Programming; Objects slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag ch. 1 Getting Started. What computation is, algorithms as recipes, and the difference between syntax, static semantics and semantics. Short; read it all, and try the finger exercise at the end. Guttag §2.1 (opening) The Basic Elements of Python: a program is a sequence of statements, the shell, and what print does. Guttag §2.1.1 Objects, Expressions, and Numerical Types: every value is an object with a type; int, float, bool and None; the type() function. Read up to Figure 2.1 — the operators are next lecture. Guttag §2.1.3 Python IDE's. Skim only: the book uses Anaconda, we use Thonny, but the editor/shell/debugger picture is the same.	—	—
2	Thu, 3 Sep	Expressions, Variables slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §2.1.1 (from Figure 2.1) Operators on int and float, precedence and parentheses, == versus =, and the and / or / not operators. Try each example in the shell. Guttag §2.1.2 Variables and Assignment: a variable is a name bound to an object (Figure 2.2), rebinding, choosing readable names, reserved words, comments, and multiple assignment (x, y = y, x). The core of this lecture.	OS navigation, command line, Thonny lab 01starter	—
3	Tue, 8 Sep	Strings, Input/Output slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §2.3 Strings and Input: string literals, + and * on strings, len, indexing and slicing, and the input function. Read before class. Guttag §2.3.1–2.3.2 Input in detail, and the digression on character encoding. The encoding part is background; skim it. Guttag §5.5 (string methods) Strings, Tuples, Ranges, and Lists — only the string methods table near the end (find, split, strip, …). We use these from now on; ignore the tuple/list parts until lecture 11.	—	A0 releasedstarter
4	Thu, 10 Sep	Boolean Expressions slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §2.1.1 (end) The bool type and the primitive operators and, or, not — the last half page of the section. Re-read it. Guttag §2.2 (first half) Branching Programs, up to the first flowchart: how a boolean expression drives an if statement. The rest of §2.2 is next lecture.	Expressions, Variables lab 02starter	—
5	Tue, 15 Sep	Conditions slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §2.2 Branching Programs in full: if / elif / else, nested conditionals, and why indentation is the block structure. Do the finger exercises.	—	quiz 1 solution
6	Thu, 17 Sep	Problem Set 1 slidesfinger ex.	I/O, Boolean expressions lab 03starter	A0 dueEA1 releasedstarterplay EA1EA1 experimentsk2.py
7	Tue, 22 Sep	Iteration slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §2.4 Iteration: the while loop, the loop flowchart, and hand-simulating a loop (Figure 2.6). Read before class. Guttag §3.1 Exhaustive Enumeration: the first useful thing a loop can do — guess-and-check. Short. Guttag §3.2 For Loops and range. We treat for as the everyday loop and while as the special case; the book does the reverse.	—	—
8	Thu, 24 Sep	Problem Set 2 slides	Conditions lab 04starter	A1 releasedstarterplay A1
9	Tue, 29 Sep	Code Abstraction, Functions slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §4.1–4.1.2 Functions and Scoping: def, parameters and arguments, return, keyword arguments and default values. Stop before §4.1.3 — scoping is next lecture. Guttag §4.2 Specifications: what a docstring promises and why 'decomposition and abstraction' are the point of functions.	—	quiz 2
10	Thu, 1 Oct	Environment Diagrams slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §4.1.3 Scoping: the three rules for name lookup and the stack-frame pictures (Figures 4.2 and 4.3). These are the environment diagrams we draw in class — read it twice. Guttag §4.4 Global Variables. Why the book calls them 'a good way to make programs hard to understand'. Short, optional.	Iteration lab 05	—
11	Tue, 6 Oct	Tuples, Lists slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §5.1–5.1.1 Tuples, and sequences with multiple assignment. Immutable first, so mutability stands out later. Guttag §5.2 Ranges. Half a page; it explains what range actually returns. Guttag §5.3 (up to Figure 5.3) Lists and Mutability: literals, indexing, append and the list methods table (Figure 5.4). Stop at the aliasing discussion — that is next lecture.	—	A1 dueA2 released
12	Thu, 8 Oct	Aliasing, Cloning slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §5.3 (from Figure 5.3) Aliasing: two names for one list, and why mutation through one name shows up through the other. The most important idea in the chapter. Guttag §5.3.1 Cloning: L[:], list(L), and when a copy is not deep enough. Guttag §5.5 Strings, Tuples, Ranges, and Lists compared (Figures 5.6–5.7): which are mutable, which are not.	Functions lab 06	quiz 3
13	Tue, 13 Oct	Comprehensions, 2-D Lists slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §5.3.2 List Comprehension. One page; then rewrite last week's loops as comprehensions. Guttag §5.4 Functions as Objects: map and passing functions around. Optional — a preview of what comprehensions generalise. Python docs Data Structures §5.1.4 Nested list comprehensions and the matrix-transpose example: the tutorial's treatment of lists of lists, which the book does not cover.	—	—
14	Thu, 15 Oct	Problem Set 3 slides	Lists lab 07	—
—	Tue, 20 Oct	Midterm Examination	—	exam paperA2 dueA3 released
—	Thu, 22 Oct	Fall Break — no class	—	—
15	Tue, 27 Oct	Search, Approximation slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §3.1 Exhaustive Enumeration, re-read now that you can write loops fluently. Guttag §3.3 Approximate Solutions and Bisection Search: 'close enough' as a stopping condition, then halving the interval. Guttag §3.4 A Few Words About Using Floats: why 0.1 is not 0.1, and what it means for == on floats. Guttag §10.1 Search Algorithms: linear search, then binary search on sorted lists. Optional now; we return to it with Big-O.	—	—
16	Thu, 29 Oct	Assertions, Exceptions slidesreadings Guttag §7.1 Handling Exceptions: try / except, the common exception types, and catching only what you mean to. Guttag §7.2 Exceptions as a Control Flow Mechanism: raise, and returning errors versus raising them. Guttag §7.3 Assertions: assert as a check on your own assumptions, not on user input. Half a page.	Advanced Lists lab	—
17	Tue, 3 Nov	Dictionaries slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §5.6 Dictionaries: keys and values, the operations table (Figure 5.10), iteration order, and what can be a key. Read before class.	—	quiz 4
18	Thu, 5 Nov	Counting Steps, Big-O slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §9.1 Thinking About Computational Complexity: counting steps, best/worst/average case. Read before class. Guttag §9.2 Asymptotic Notation: what Big-O actually says and what it throws away. Guttag §9.3 Some Important Complexity Classes, constant through exponential, with an example of each. §9.3.7 has the comparison plots.	Search, Approximation, Exceptions lab	A3 dueA4 released
19	Tue, 10 Nov	Sorting slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §10.2–10.2.1 Sorting Algorithms and Merge Sort: the divide-and-conquer argument and why it is n log n. Guttag §10.2.2–10.2.3 Sorting with a key function, and Python's built-in sort and sorted. This is what you will actually call. Guttag §10.1.2 Binary Search and Exploiting Assumptions: why sorting first can pay for itself. Optional.	—	—
20	Thu, 12 Nov	Codes & Codebreakers slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §5.6 (Figure 5.9) Translating text (badly): a substitution cipher is a dictionary lookup per word. The whole lecture is this figure grown up. Guttag §5.5 String methods you need for ciphers: split, join, lower, and the character-by-character loop. Re-read. Guttag §2.3.2 Character encoding, ord and chr. Needed for shift ciphers. Short.	Dictionaries, Big-O lab	—
21	Tue, 17 Nov	Recursion and the Call Stack slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §4.3 Recursion: the base case, the recursive case, and factorial done both ways. Read before class. Guttag §4.1.3 (Figure 4.3) Stack frames, re-read: each recursive call is one more frame. Draw the frames for fact(3) by hand.	—	quiz 5
22	Thu, 19 Nov	Thinking Recursively slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §4.3.1 Fibonacci Numbers: two base cases, and the problem of recomputing the same values. Guttag §4.3.2 Palindromes: recursion on strings, and the 'divide, conquer, combine' template we reuse. Guttag §13.1 Fibonacci Sequences, Revisited: memoization fixes the recomputation. Optional; we return to it in lecture 26.	Sorting, Ciphers lab	—
23	Tue, 24 Nov	Randomness and Simulation slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §15.1–15.2 Stochastic Programs and Calculating Simple Probabilities: random.random, random.choice, and what 'the same program gives different answers' means. Read before class. Guttag §14.1–14.2 Random Walks and the Drunkard's Walk: the simulation we build in class, minus the classes. Guttag §16.4 Finding π by throwing darts. Short, and the best two-page argument for why simulation works.	—	—
24	Thu, 26 Nov	Plotting slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §11.1 Plotting Using PyLab: plot, title, labels, legends, figure, and saving to a file. The book uses pylab; matplotlib.pyplot is the same functions under the name we use. Guttag §14.2 (plots) The drunkard's-walk plots: a worked example of turning simulation output into a figure. Optional.	Recursion lab	A4 due
25	Tue, 1 Dec	Testing, Debugging; Type Annotations slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §6.1 Testing: black-box versus glass-box tests, boundary cases, and how to choose test inputs. Guttag §6.2 Debugging: treat a bug as an experiment (§6.2.2), and what to do when the going gets tough (§6.2.3). Python docs typing — Support for type hints Type annotations are not in this edition of the book. Read the first screen of the typing docs; we use annotations as documentation only.	—	quiz 6
26	Thu, 3 Dec	Making Python Faster slidesfinger ex.readings Guttag §13.1 Fibonacci Sequences, Revisited: memoization — remember answers instead of recomputing them. Guttag §16.3 Using Table Lookup to Improve Performance: the same idea applied to a simulation, with timings. Guttag §10.3 Hash Tables: why dictionary lookup is constant time, and therefore why 'use a dict' is so often the fix. Guttag §9.3.7 Comparisons of Complexity Classes: pick the better algorithm before you tune the code. Re-read.	Simulation, Plotting lab	—
27	Tue, 8 Dec	Course Review & Exam Preparation slidesreadings Guttag Appendix: Python 3.5 Quick Reference The whole language we used, on four pages. Read it and mark anything you cannot explain — that is your revision list. Guttag ch. 1–7, 9–10 Everything examinable is in these chapters. Re-do the finger exercises rather than re-reading the prose.	—	—
—	Thu, 10 Dec	Final Examination	—	exam paper

Slide decks and finger exercises are posted after each lecture; assignment specs and starter kits when the assignment is released; quiz solutions after the quiz. Quiz and exam papers are not distributed here. An extra activity (EA) is practice: it is not graded and nothing is handed in.

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