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+# Basic Python Programming
+
+This is a fairly intense two day workshop on learning basic Python
+programming. The course is completely hands-on and requires each student to
+have access to a computer with the necessary software installed and with
+internet access.
+
+The workshop is designed to be taken with our online testing platform called
+[yaksh](http://yaksh.fossee.in). After every hands-on lecture, we have a
+practice session where students are expected to solve the given problem on our
+online platform. The solutions to each problem will be shown and students will
+proceed to the next problem. Close to 60 exercises will be solved by the
+students over the course of this workshop.
+
+Students will also need to take a programming test to be assessed and receive
+certificates.
+
+The course only covers basic Python programming. See the outline of the course
+below to see what is covered.
+
+
+
+## Intended audience and pre-requisites
+
+This course requires that students have completed our "Introductory Scientific
+Computing with Python" course and passed it.
+
+This course is designed to be taken by folks who do not have any significant
+programming experience. The students should be comfortable using a computer
+and editing text files.
+
+## Software and hardware requirements
+
+A laptop or reasonably configured desktop is recommended since this will be a
+hands-on session.
+
+Please install Python 3.x (or 2.7.x if 3.x is not available) for this course.
+
+On Linux, Windows and Mac OS X it is easiest to install Python and many other
+useful packages by installing Canopy. Download the Canopy Python distribution
+for your OS and architecture from here: https://store.enthought.com/downloads .
+
+You could also use Anaconda or Conda along with the Spyder editor to obtain
+the requirements.
+
+On many Linux distributions, Python is already available. We suggest that you
+install Python 3.x and are comfortable with any text editor. Editors that
+integrate with Python would be better.
+
+
+## Outline of the course
+
+- Python Basics:
+  - Basic datatypes: numbers, booleans, and strings
+  - Basic operators: arithmetic, string operators, and string methods.
+  - Relational and logical operators.
+  - `assert` statements and built-ins.
+  - Simple input and output with `input` and `print`.
+  - Simple Exercises.
+
+- Practice exercises for the basics.
+
+- Basic control flow in Python:
+  - Conditional flow with `if/elif/else`.
+  - The ternary operators.
+  - Looping with `while`.
+  - Solving a simple problem.
+  - Looping with `for` and `range`.
+  - Using `break`, `continue`, and `pass`.
+  - Exercises
+
+- Practice exercises for control flow.
+
+- Core data structures in Python:
+  - Lists
+  - Tuples
+  - Dictionaries
+  - Sets
+  - Some exercises.
+
+- Practice exercises for the core data structures.
+
+- Writing functions.
+  - Simple functions taking no arguments, returning `None`.
+  - Functions taking arguments and returning values.
+  - Docstrings.
+  - Returning multiple values.
+  - Default arguments.
+  - Keyword arguments.
+  - Variable scope when defining functions.
+  - Mutable vs immutable arguments.
+  - Example functions to read for practice.
+  - Nested functions.
+  - Returning functions.
+
+- Practice exercises for functions.
+
+- Python modules.
+  - Creating modules
+  - Importing modules.
+  - `sys.path`, `PYTHONPATH`
+  - Running modules as scripts
+  - The use of `__name__`.
+
+- Reading and writing files.
+  - Reading files.
+  - Writing files, using `.write` and using `print`
+  - Example: parsing data from a file.
+
+- Python exceptions:
+  - Standard exception examples.
+  - Catching exceptions with `try/except`
+  - Catching multiple exceptions.
+  - Cleanup with `finally`
+  - Raising one's own exceptions.
+
+- Practice exercises for files and exceptions.