Introduction to Programming for Data Science

Students learn Python 3 syntax and semantics; core data structures; control flow and functions; exceptions and robust file/stream I/O; typing and lightweight data contracts; iterators, generators, and context managers for streaming; and algorithmic thinking with a focus on sorting and tree/graph search basics. Practical engineering skills include Git/GitHub (with preliminary SSH), project structure & packaging, unit testing, documentation, an orientation to IDEs, the Linux command line, and AI-assisted code review and more technical details. The emphasis is writing clear, reliable, and reproducible Python that scales from notebooks to small, well-structured scripts and packages.