Course syllabus

This is the course web page from 2021. The 2022 page is here.

lp2 HT21 (7.5 hp)

The course is offered by the department of Computer Science and Engineering.

This is a new course, to be given for the first time now. This web page is therefore not yet complete. But it will contain all essential information before the course starts on 2 November 2021.

Links

• TimeEdit, schedule with times and locations
• course GitHub, containing most of the material such as labs, exercises, and lecture notes
• lecture notes, updated at GitHub as the course proceeds
• official Python tutorial, covering the most of the language and the main material for the beginning of the course, but something to go back to even later

Teachers

• examiner: Aarne Ranta
• supervisors: Arianna Masciolini, William Åkvist

The best way to contact the teachers is via our Slack channel (forthcoming)

Course purpose

The course is aimed for students who have completed an introductory course in programming. If that course is in Python (e.g. DAT455 or TIN214 at Chalmers), there will be some repetition at the beginning. The reason is that the course will also be accessible for students who have a different background, such as a Java course. The first two lectures will be a quick "crash course" giving a summary of Python to those who already know programming, just not the syntax of Python.

After that, the course will proceed to more advanced features of Python and, in particular, to more advanced applications. The ultimate goal is to cover all aspects of "full stack development", in the form of a series of labs that results in a web application with a front end, a back end, and a database. 

Schedule

The official schedule is in

TimeEdit

which gives both times and locations. But we will also support remote participation by making recordings and other material available. The links will be given in Announcements, which limits the access to those who are registered.

The only compulsory participation in place is the exam in January - all other parts can be made via internet, for the most part via this Canvas page. 

Course literature

We will list here some recommended books and web documents, but there is no one official compulsory book. 

The official documentation of Python

https://docs.python.org/3/

will be used as the standard reference. One of the very goals of this course is to give a clear view of everything in the Python language and its standard libraries and enable reading technical documentation on an advanced level.

Course design

The course consists of

• lectures
• exercise classes
• individual supervision
• discussion forum (Slack)
• assignments ("labs") to be submitted and graded - individually by each student
• exam

Lecture and lab schedule

The following table gives a schedule of the main events of the course (note: preliminary)

Date, time, location	Event	Notes
Tue 2/11, 10-12, HC2	Lecture 1: Python recap and tutorial I
Wed 3/11, 10-12, SB-L400	Exercise
Thu 4/11, 10-12, HA4	Lecture 2: Python recap and tutorial II
Tue 9/11, 10-12, HC2	Lecture 3: Information extraction methods	ready for Lab 1
Wed 10/11, 10-12	Exercise
Thu 11/11, 10-12, HB4	Lecture 4: Graph algorithms
Tue 16/11, 10-12, HC2	Lecture 5: Python Data Model, Object-oriented design I
Wed 17/11, 10-12	Exercise
Thu 18/11, 10-12, HA4	Lecture 6: Object-oriented design II	ready for Lab 2
Wed 24/11	Lab 1 deadline
week 22-26/11	lecture break	time to work on labs
Tue 30/11, 10-12, HC4	Lecture 7: Visualization
Wed 1/12, 10-12	Exercise
Thu 2/12, 10-12, HB4	Lecture 8: Web programming
Mon 6/12	Lab 2 deadline
Tue 7/12, 10-12, HC2	Lecture 9: Server-side web programming; Full-stack development I	ready for Lab 3
Wed 8/12, 10-12	Exercise
Thu 9/12, 10-12, HB4	Lecture 10: Full-stack development II; Extra lab topic Graph Coloring
Tue 14/12, 10-12, HB4	Lecture 11: Guest lecture by Yinan Yu (Chalmers, asymptotic.ai , and aixia.se), "Full stack deep learning"; Extra lab topic Machine Learning	ready for extra labs
Wed 15/12, 10-12	Exercise
Thu 16/12, 10-12, HB1	Lecture 12: Repetition in the form of mock-up exam questions;  Guest lecture by John Camilleri (Textual AB and Digital Grammars AB), "Python in real world applications".
Wed 22/12	Lab 3 deadline
Wed 5/1/2022	Extra Labs Deadline
Mon 10/1, 14-18, Johanneberg	Exam
Wed 12/1	last deadline for lab resubmissions

The Labs

The lab consists of building a web application for route finding in a public transport network, exemplified by the tram system of Gothenburg; see picture below. The application allows queries about the network, such as asking for the shortest or the fastest route from one place to another. The final application will be demonstrated with the Gothenburg tram network, but the software behind it will be much more general and applicable not only to transport networks but to graphs of many kinds.

This lab is built in three parts, submitted separately each by its own deadline. The three lectures preceding the work on each lab will give the theoretical background and technical prerequisites of the work.

• Lab 1 (lectures 1-3): Information Extraction. Collect and combine data from different sources (files, web queries) and formats (pain text, Json). This is an exercise in finding and using relevant functions and libraries of Python. It will provide the database part of the full application.
• Lab 2 (lectures 4-6): Graph Classes and Algorithms. Implement a library of concepts applicable for graph analysis tasks - transport networks as focus but not the only application. This is at the same time a substantial exercise in object-oriented design (classes, methods, encapsulation, inheritance, modelling). It will provide the back end part of the full application.
• Lab 3 (lectures 7-9): Web Application. Build a web server and user interface, in which the user can find routes in transport networks. This requires learning about visualization libraries and web application frameworks. It will provide the front end part of the full application and put all the components togethe.

The Gothenburg Tram Network (picture by Bengt-Inge Larsson - Eget arbete, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92652381)

These three labs are compulsory for everyone and sufficient for the accepted grade 3. For higher grades, extra labs can be submitted - basically, one lab for grade 4, two for grade 5. Possible topics for these labs will include:

• A graph colouring algorithm: colouring maps in a given number of colours.
• Clustering: unsupervised machine learning techniques for finding distinguishable parts of a graph. 
• Extra parts in the ordinary labs: doing certain things easier or using ready-made solutions, as indicated in each lab.

But we are also open to suggestions from course participants. The following topics were mentioned previously, but we have no time to cover them in lectures, whereas extra parts in ordinary labs have increased:

• Call graphs for Python programs: finding dependences between functions and classes
• Reasoning about WikiData: finding and visualizing information from the graph database that underlies Wikipedia.

These are of course still good illustrations of what can be done with graphs.

Learning objectives and syllabus

Learning objectives:

Knowledge and understanding:

• recognize all constructs of Python and the design choices behind them
• explain the design alternatives in modular and scalable programming

Skills and abilities:

• create well-organized software projects for complex tasks
• read and analyse code written by others
• contribute to collaborative projects
• use standard libraries for advanced tasks
• apply testing methods to guarantee the quality of code
• write code documentation on different levels of detail

Judgement and approach:

• reason about software design choices
• assess the complexity of programming tasks

Link to the syllabus on Studieportalen:

Study plan

Examination form

The most important part are the labs, will together form a project. This project has compulsory parts, sufficient for grade 3, and optional parts for those aiming at grades 4 and 5.

The exam will test the knowledge acquired by doing the labs. It will have dedicated questions for the levels 3, 4, and 5. The final grade requires that both the lab and the exam for that grade are accepted.

The labs can be done in pairs, whereas the exam is done individually. Copying from other groups (pairs or individuals) in the labs is forbidden.