Python Programming: PCAP Exam Preparation
Move from writing scripts to building structured, maintainable Python programs.
About this course
Move from writing scripts to building structured, maintainable Python programs. Over seven days you will organise code into modules and packages, handle errors properly with exceptions and process text with a clear understanding of Unicode and string methods.
The second half focuses on object-oriented programming: classes, inheritance, polymorphism and encapsulation, followed by comprehensions, lambdas, closures, generators and file processing. The course follows the published PCAP content outline, with practice questions preparing you for the Certified Associate Python Programmer exam.
What you'll learn
- Organise code into modules and packages and use the standard library
- Handle errors with the exception hierarchy and define custom exceptions
- Process strings and characters with a clear understanding of Unicode
- Design classes using inheritance, polymorphism and encapsulation
- Apply list comprehensions, lambda functions, closures and generators
- Read and write text and binary files
- Approach the PCAP exam with a clear understanding of its format and question styles
Curriculum
- Data types, operators and control flow
- Collections and their methods
- Functions, arguments and scopes
- Writing readable code
- Importing modules and namespaces
- Useful standard modules: math, random and platform
- Creating your own modules
- Packages and the __name__ variable
- Installing packages with pip
- The exception hierarchy
- try, except, else and finally
- Raising exceptions
- Assertions
- Defining custom exceptions
- ASCII, Unicode and UTF-8
- ord() and chr()
- String methods and comparisons
- Sorting and converting strings
- Processing text
- Classes, objects and instances
- Instance and class variables
- Methods and the self parameter
- Constructors
- Introspection and reflection
- Single and multiple inheritance
- Method resolution order
- Overriding methods and super()
- isinstance() and issubclass()
- Composition versus inheritance
- Special methods such as __str__
- Encapsulation and name mangling
- Exceptions as objects
- Building your own exception classes
- List comprehensions
- Lambda functions
- map() and filter()
- Closures
- Generators and the yield keyword
- Opening and closing files
- Text and binary modes
- Reading and writing streams
- Working with bytearray
- Handling I/O errors
- PCAP exam structure and question types
- Timed practice questions
- Reviewing weak areas
- Test-day preparation
Who it's for
Programmers with basic Python skills who want to write object-oriented code and earn the PCAP certification.
Before you start
- Knowledge equivalent to the PCEP level, or our Python Essentials: PCEP Exam Preparation course
- Practical experience writing simple Python programs
Prepares for
Part of these Alalamia diplomas
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