Python Course: Zero to Advanced

Learning Roadmap

Beginner — Foundations (Modules 01–04) · ~4 weeksPython setup, syntax, variables, operators, control flow, functions, and built-in data structures.

Intermediate — OOP & Ecosystem (Modules 05–08) · ~5 weeksObject-oriented programming, file I/O, exceptions, comprehensions, generators, modules, and the standard library.

Advanced — Real-World Engineering (Modules 09–12) · ~6 weeksDecorators, async/concurrency, REST APIs, databases, testing, packaging, and ML fundamentals.

Beginner Level

🐍

Python Foundations

Modules 01–04 · Estimated 4 weeks · No prior experience needed

Beginner

Getting Started with Python

Install Python, write your first program, understand basic types

Week 1

Installing Python 3 & VS Code

Python interpreter & REPL

Hello World program

Comments & indentation rules

print() & input()

Variables & naming conventions

Data types: int, float, str, bool

Type conversion (int(), str()…)

f-strings & string formatting

Basic arithmetic operators

# Your first Python program
name = input("What is your name? ")
age  = int(input("Your age? "))
print(f"Hello {name}! In 10 years you'll be {age + 10}.")

📚 Resources

📖 Official Tutorial — Intro ▶ Python Full Course – Programming with Mosh ▶ Python Beginner – freeCodeCamp 🌐 W3Schools Python 💻 HackerRank Python

Operators & Control Flow

Make decisions, create loops, and control program flow

Week 1–2

Arithmetic, comparison & assignment

Logical operators: and, or, not

if / elif / else statements

Ternary (conditional) expression

for loops & range()

while loops

break, continue, pass

Nested loops

match / case (Python 3.10+)

Loop else clause

# FizzBuzz
for i in range(1, 21):
    if   i % 15 == 0: print("FizzBuzz")
    elif i %  3 == 0: print("Fizz")
    elif i %  5 == 0: print("Buzz")
    else:             print(i)

📚 Resources

📖 Official Docs — Control Flow ▶ Loops & Conditionals – Corey Schafer 🌐 W3Schools — If…Else 💻 Codewars — Loop Kata 📝 Real Python — For Loops

Functions

Write reusable, clean, and well-documented functions

Week 2–3

Defining & calling functions

Parameters & return values

Default & keyword arguments

*args and **kwargs

Variable scope (local / global)

Lambda (anonymous) functions

Recursion with base case

Docstrings & help()

Positional-only parameters (/)

Function annotations

def greet(name: str, greeting: str = "Hello") -> str:
    """Return a personalised greeting string."""
    return f"{greeting}, {name}!"

square = lambda x: x ** 2
print(square(7))  # 49

📚 Resources

📖 Official Docs — Functions ▶ Functions – Corey Schafer 🌐 W3Schools — Functions 📝 Real Python — Define Functions 💻 Codewars — Function Kata

Data Structures

Lists, tuples, sets, and dictionaries — store and organise data

Week 3–4

Lists — create, index, slice

List methods: append, pop, sort…

Tuples & immutability

Sets & set operations

Dictionaries (key-value pairs)

Dict methods: get, items, keys…

Nested data structures

Unpacking & spread (*)

sorted(), min(), max(), sum()

enumerate() & zip()

student = {"name": "Alice", "grades": [88, 92, 79]}
avg = sum(student["grades"]) / len(student["grades"])
print(f"Average: {avg:.1f}")

# Unpacking
first, *rest = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

📚 Resources

📖 Official Docs — Data Structures ▶ Lists, Tuples, Sets, Dicts – Corey Schafer 🌐 W3Schools — Lists 📝 Real Python — Lists & Tuples 💻 LeetCode — Easy Arrays

Intermediate Level

⚙️

OOP, Standard Library & Patterns

Modules 05–08 · Estimated 5 weeks · Requires Beginner completion

Intermediate

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)

Classes, inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism

Week 5–6

Classes & objects

__init__ & self

Instance vs class attributes

Instance, class & static methods

Inheritance & super()

Method overriding

Encapsulation & name mangling

Dunder methods (__str__, __repr__…)

Abstract base classes (ABC)

Polymorphism & duck typing

from abc import ABC, abstractmethod

class Animal(ABC):
    def __init__(self, name): self.name = name
    @abstractmethod
    def speak(self): ...

class Dog(Animal):
    def speak(self): return f"{self.name}: Woof!"

print(Dog("Rex").speak())

📚 Resources

📖 Official Docs — Classes ▶ OOP Python – Corey Schafer (6-part) ▶ OOP in 1 Hour – freeCodeCamp 🌐 W3Schools — Classes 📝 Real Python — OOP Guide

File I/O & Exception Handling

Read/write files and handle errors gracefully

Week 6–7

open(), read(), write(), append

with statement & context managers

Reading / writing CSV files

JSON: load, dump, loads, dumps

try / except / else / finally

Built-in exception types

Custom exceptions (class)

raise & exception chaining

pathlib.Path for file paths

os & shutil basics

import json
from pathlib import Path

def load_config(path: str) -> dict:
    p = Path(path)
    if not p.exists():
        raise FileNotFoundError(f"No config at {p}")
    return json.loads(p.read_text())

📚 Resources

📖 Official Docs — I/O 📖 Official Docs — Exceptions ▶ Exception Handling – Corey Schafer 📝 Real Python — Exceptions 🌐 W3Schools — File Handling

Comprehensions, Iterators & Generators

Write concise, Pythonic, memory-efficient code

Week 7–8

List comprehensions

Dict & set comprehensions

Conditional comprehensions

Nested comprehensions

Generator expressions

yield & generator functions

iter() & next()

Custom iterator class

map(), filter(), reduce()

itertools: chain, product, groupby

# Memory-efficient generator
def fibonacci(n):
    a, b = 0, 1
    for _ in range(n):
        yield a
        a, b = b, a + b

even_fibs = [x for x in fibonacci(30) if x % 2 == 0]

📚 Resources

📖 Official — Functional Programming ▶ Generators – Corey Schafer 📝 Real Python — Comprehensions 📝 Real Python — Generators 🌐 itertools Docs

Modules, Packages & Virtual Environments

Structure projects, manage dependencies, standard library

Week 8–9

import & from…import

__name__ == "__main__"

Creating packages (__init__.py)

pip & PyPI

venv — create & activate

requirements.txt

datetime & time

math & random

re — regular expressions

collections module

📚 Resources

📖 Official Docs — Modules ▶ Modules & Packages – Corey Schafer 📝 Real Python — Virtual Environments 🌐 Regex (re) Docs 💻 RegExr — Practice Regex

Advanced Level

🚀

Real-World Engineering

Modules 09–12 · Estimated 6 weeks · Requires Intermediate completion

Advanced

Advanced Python Features

Decorators, type hints, dataclasses, and metaclasses

Week 10–11

First-class functions & closures

Decorators (@wraps)

Stacking & parameterised decorators

Context managers (__enter__/__exit__)

contextlib.contextmanager

dataclasses module

Type hints & typing module

mypy static type checking

__slots__ for memory efficiency

Metaclasses basics

import functools, time

def timer(func):
    @functools.wraps(func)
    def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
        t0 = time.perf_counter()
        result = func(*args, **kwargs)
        print(f"{func.__name__} → {time.perf_counter()-t0:.4f}s")
        return result
    return wrapper

📚 Resources

📖 functools Docs ▶ Decorators – Corey Schafer 📝 Real Python — Decorators 📝 Real Python — dataclasses 🌐 mypy — Getting Started

Async Programming & Concurrency

asyncio, threading, multiprocessing, and concurrent.futures

Week 11–12

async / await syntax

asyncio event loop

Coroutines & Tasks

asyncio.gather() & wait()

Async context managers

threading module

Thread locks & race conditions

multiprocessing module

concurrent.futures

GIL — understanding limits

import asyncio

async def fetch(url: str) -> str:
    await asyncio.sleep(1)   # simulate I/O wait
    return f"data from {url}"

async def main():
    urls = ["api/users", "api/posts", "api/tags"]
    results = await asyncio.gather(*[fetch(u) for u in urls])
    print(results)

📚 Resources

📖 asyncio Official Docs ▶ AsyncIO – Tech With Tim ▶ Concurrency — Real Python Talk 📝 Real Python — Async IO 📝 Real Python — Concurrency

Databases, APIs & Web

SQLite, SQLAlchemy, REST APIs with FastAPI, and HTTP clients

Week 13–14

SQLite3 — connect, execute, fetch

SQLAlchemy 2 ORM basics

Alembic migrations

httpx — async HTTP client

Parsing JSON responses

FastAPI — routes & path params

Pydantic data validation

Dependency injection (FastAPI)

JWT authentication

Environment variables & .env

from fastapi import FastAPI
from pydantic import BaseModel

app = FastAPI()

class Item(BaseModel):
    name: str
    price: float

@app.post("/items")
async def create_item(item: Item):
    return {"id": 1, **item.model_dump()}

📚 Resources

📖 FastAPI Official Tutorial 📖 SQLAlchemy 2 Tutorial ▶ FastAPI Full Course – freeCodeCamp 📝 Real Python — FastAPI Guide 🌐 httpx Quickstart

Testing, Packaging & Data Science Intro

pytest, pyproject.toml, NumPy, pandas, and scikit-learn

Week 14–16

pytest basics & assertions

Fixtures & conftest.py

Parametrize & marks

unittest.mock & MagicMock

Code coverage (pytest-cov)

pyproject.toml setup

Publishing to PyPI (twine)

NumPy arrays & broadcasting

pandas DataFrames & groupby

scikit-learn — train & evaluate

import pytest

def add(a, b): return a + b

@pytest.mark.parametrize("a,b,expected", [
    (1, 2, 3), (0, 0, 0), (-1, 1, 0)
])
def test_add(a, b, expected):
    assert add(a, b) == expected

📚 Resources

📖 pytest Docs 📖 NumPy Quickstart ▶ pytest – Arjan Codes 📝 Real Python — pytest Guide 🌐 scikit-learn Getting Started

Practice Projects

01 — Number Guessing Game

Use loops, conditionals, and random to build a classic number-guessing CLI game with score tracking.

BeginnerLoopsFunctions

📝 Guide on Real Python

02 — To-Do List CLI App

Create, read, update and delete tasks stored in a JSON file. Includes search and filter features.

BeginnerFile I/OJSON

03 — Secure Password Generator

Generate strong random passwords using the secrets module with configurable length and character sets.

IntermediateOOPsecrets

📝 Real Python — Random Data

04 — Student Grade Manager

OOP-based system to manage students, courses, and grades. Includes statistics (mean, median, GPA).

IntermediateOOPFile I/O

05 — Web Scraper & CSV Export

Scrape structured data from a public site using httpx + BeautifulSoup, then save results to CSV.

IntermediatehttpxCSV

📝 Real Python — BeautifulSoup

06 — File Organiser Automation

Automatically sort files in a directory into subfolders by extension using os, shutil, and pathlib.

Intermediatepathlibshutil

07 — REST API — Task Manager

Full CRUD API with FastAPI, SQLite (via SQLAlchemy), Pydantic validation, and JWT authentication.

AdvancedFastAPISQLiteJWT

📝 FastAPI + SQL Databases

08 — Async Weather Dashboard

Fetch weather data for multiple cities concurrently using asyncio + httpx and display a formatted report.

Advancedasynciohttpx

09 — Data Analysis Dashboard

Load a CSV dataset with pandas, compute statistics, detect outliers, and visualise with matplotlib.

Advancedpandasmatplotlib

📝 Real Python — pandas

Recommended Tools & Libraries

Category	Tool / Library	Purpose	Link
IDE	VS Code + Pylance	Editing, linting, IntelliSense	Download
Formatting	black	Auto-format Python code	Docs
Linting	ruff	Ultra-fast linter	Docs
Type Checking	mypy	Static type analysis	Docs
Testing	pytest	Unit & integration tests	Docs
HTTP Client	httpx	Async HTTP requests	Docs
Web Framework	FastAPI	Modern async REST APIs	Docs
ORM	SQLAlchemy 2	Database abstraction layer	Docs
Data Science	pandas + NumPy	Data manipulation & math	Docs
ML	scikit-learn	Classical machine learning	Docs
Notebooks	Jupyter Lab	Interactive data exploration	Docs
Env Manager	uv	Blazing-fast env & packages	Docs

Learning Tips

Code every single dayEven 20–30 minutes of daily practice beats weekend 4-hour sessions. Consistency is the #1 predictor of progress.

Read error messages top-to-bottomPython's tracebacks are your best friend. The most useful clue is almost always the last line.

Build projects, not just exercisesApply each module to a small project you care about. Real-world context cements learning far better than drills.

Use the REPL & Jupyter for experimentsBefore writing a complex function, prototype in the interactive shell or a Jupyter notebook cell.

Read other people's codeBrowse GitHub repos of popular Python projects. Reading good code teaches style, patterns, and idioms faster than any tutorial.

Live Python Terminal — Run Code in Your Browser

Write Python code below and click Run — executes 100% in your browser using Skulpt. No install needed. Supports print, input, loops, functions, classes, and more.

EXAMPLES:

stdin (for input()):

editor — write your code

output

Output will appear here after you click Run...

Python: Zero to Advanced

Python Foundations

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OOP, Standard Library & Patterns

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Real-World Engineering

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01 — Number Guessing Game

02 — To-Do List CLI App

03 — Secure Password Generator

04 — Student Grade Manager

05 — Web Scraper & CSV Export

06 — File Organiser Automation

07 — REST API — Task Manager

08 — Async Weather Dashboard

09 — Data Analysis Dashboard