Welcome to COGS 18: Introduction to Python!

COGS 18 | Shannon Ellis | Spring 2024 | UCSD

Overview

Introduction to Python (COGS 18) is a course offered by the Department of Cognitive Science of UC San Diego. It is a hands-on programming course, focused on teaching students in Cognitive Science and related disciplines an introduction on how to productively use Python.

Current Iteration

Introduction to Python is currently running for Spring 2024, please read the syllabus.

Materials

All course materials are openly available and downloadable from this website, but we highly recommend following along in class with a live notebook so you can try the programs we talk about as we talk about them. To get your own live copy of the notebooks and follow along in lecture click on this link to transfer the current lecture materials from our GitHub to your DataHub instance. This GitHub repo[1] updates every lecture, so you will have to click on this link every lecture to keep your DataHub up to date.

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[1]

Git and Github are tools used by many programmers. Git is version control software that helps you keep track of changes in your code as you work on it. GitHub is a web platform (using Git) for working on your code by yourself, working on your code with other programmers, and sharing your code once it is ready to be used. The source material for everything hosted on this site is also available on GitHub. While we don’t explicitly teach you to use GitHub in this class, you should definitely explore it on your own if you’re interested! Here are some different Github tutorials.