progress-template.md

Python Learning Progress Tracker

Student Branch: student/YOUR_NAME Started: YYYY-MM-DD Last Updated: YYYY-MM-DD

Instructions

1. Copy this file to your student branch
2. Update the completion status as you work through topics
3. Add notes about difficulties so you can revisit them
4. Use this file to tell Claude what you want to work on next

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• 🔄 In Progress
• ✅ Completed
• 🔁 Needs Review (completed but struggled, want to revisit)

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1. Fundamentals

1.1 Getting Started

• ⬜ Installing Python and setting up your environment
• ⬜ Running Python scripts
• ⬜ Using the Python interactive shell (REPL)
• ⬜ Basic syntax and indentation rules

Notes:

1.2 Variables and Data Types

• ⬜ Variables and assignment
• ⬜ Basic data types: int, float, str, bool
• ⬜ Type conversion and casting
• ⬜ Understanding None

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1.3 Basic Operations

• ⬜ Arithmetic operators (+, -, *, /, //, %, **)
• ⬜ Comparison operators (==, !=, <, >, <=, >=)
• ⬜ Logical operators (and, or, not)
• ⬜ String operations and concatenation

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2. Control Flow

2.1 Conditional Statements

• ⬜ if, elif, else statements
• ⬜ Nested conditionals
• ⬜ Ternary operator
• ⬜ Truthy and falsy values

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2.2 Loops

• ⬜ while loops
• ⬜ for loops and the range() function
• ⬜ Loop control: break, continue, pass
• ⬜ Nested loops
• ⬜ Loop else clauses

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3. Data Structures

3.1 Lists

• ⬜ Creating and accessing lists
• ⬜ List methods (append, extend, insert, remove, pop, etc.)
• ⬜ List slicing
• ⬜ List comprehensions
• ⬜ Nested lists

Notes:

3.2 Tuples

• ⬜ Creating and using tuples
• ⬜ Tuple unpacking
• ⬜ Immutability of tuples
• ⬜ When to use tuples vs lists

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3.3 Dictionaries

• ⬜ Creating and accessing dictionaries
• ⬜ Dictionary methods (keys, values, items, get, etc.)
• ⬜ Dictionary comprehensions
• ⬜ Nested dictionaries

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3.4 Sets

• ⬜ Creating and using sets
• ⬜ Set operations (union, intersection, difference)
• ⬜ Set comprehensions
• ⬜ Frozen sets

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4. Functions

4.1 Function Basics

• ⬜ Defining and calling functions
• ⬜ Parameters and arguments
• ⬜ Return values
• ⬜ Default parameters
• ⬜ Keyword arguments

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4.2 Advanced Function Concepts

• ⬜ *args and **kwargs
• ⬜ Lambda functions
• ⬜ Scope and namespaces (local, global, nonlocal)
• ⬜ Recursive functions

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5. Strings and Text Processing

5.1 String Manipulation

• ⬜ String methods (split, join, strip, replace, etc.)
• ⬜ String formatting (f-strings, format(), %-formatting)
• ⬜ String slicing and indexing
• ⬜ Raw strings and escape characters

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5.2 Regular Expressions

• ⬜ Pattern matching basics
• ⬜ re module functions (search, match, findall, sub)
• ⬜ Common regex patterns
• ⬜ Groups and capturing

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6. File Handling

6.1 File Operations

• ⬜ Opening and closing files
• ⬜ Reading files (read, readline, readlines)
• ⬜ Writing to files
• ⬜ File modes (r, w, a, r+, etc.)
• ⬜ Using context managers (with statement)

Notes:

6.2 Working with Different File Types

• ⬜ Text files
• ⬜ CSV files
• ⬜ JSON files
• ⬜ Working with file paths (os.path, pathlib)

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7. Error Handling

7.1 Exceptions

• ⬜ Understanding exceptions
• ⬜ try, except, else, finally blocks
• ⬜ Catching specific exceptions
• ⬜ Raising exceptions
• ⬜ Custom exceptions

Notes:

8. Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)

8.1 Classes and Objects

• ⬜ Defining classes
• ⬜ Creating instances
• ⬜ Instance attributes and methods
• ⬜ The init method
• ⬜ The self parameter

Notes:

8.2 OOP Principles

• ⬜ Encapsulation
• ⬜ Inheritance and super()
• ⬜ Polymorphism
• ⬜ Class methods and static methods
• ⬜ Property decorators

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8.3 Special Methods

• ⬜ str and repr
• ⬜ len, getitem, setitem
• ⬜ Operator overloading
• ⬜ Context managers (enter, exit)

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9. Modules and Packages

9.1 Using Modules

• ⬜ Importing modules
• ⬜ from...import statements
• ⬜ Module aliases
• ⬜ The name variable

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9.2 Creating Modules and Packages

• ⬜ Creating your own modules
• ⬜ Package structure
• ⬜ init.py files
• ⬜ Relative vs absolute imports

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10. Intermediate Concepts

10.1 Iterators and Generators

• ⬜ Understanding iterators
• ⬜ The iter() and next() functions
• ⬜ Creating generators with yield
• ⬜ Generator expressions

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10.2 Decorators

• ⬜ Function decorators
• ⬜ Creating custom decorators
• ⬜ Decorators with arguments
• ⬜ Class decorators

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10.3 Context Managers

• ⬜ Understanding context managers
• ⬜ Creating custom context managers
• ⬜ Using contextlib

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11. Standard Library Highlights

11.1 Commonly Used Modules

• ⬜ datetime and time
• ⬜ collections (Counter, defaultdict, namedtuple, deque)
• ⬜ itertools
• ⬜ functools
• ⬜ math and random

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11.2 System and OS Interaction

• ⬜ sys module
• ⬜ os module
• ⬜ subprocess
• ⬜ argparse for command-line arguments

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12. Advanced Topics

12.1 List, Dict, and Set Advanced Techniques

• ⬜ Copying vs referencing
• ⬜ Deep copy vs shallow copy
• ⬜ ChainMap and other advanced collections

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12.2 Functional Programming

• ⬜ map, filter, reduce
• ⬜ Partial functions
• ⬜ Higher-order functions

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12.3 Type Hints and Annotations

• ⬜ Basic type hints
• ⬜ Optional and Union types
• ⬜ Type checking with mypy

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13. Testing and Debugging

13.1 Testing

• ⬜ Writing unit tests with unittest
• ⬜ Using pytest
• �⬜ Test-driven development basics
• ⬜ Mocking and fixtures

Notes:

13.2 Debugging

• ⬜ Using print debugging effectively
• ⬜ Python debugger (pdb)
• ⬜ Understanding tracebacks
• ⬜ Common debugging strategies

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14. Working with External Libraries

14.1 Package Management

• ⬜ pip basics
• ⬜ requirements.txt
• ⬜ Virtual environments (venv)

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14.2 Popular Libraries Introduction

• ⬜ requests (HTTP library)
• ⬜ pandas (data analysis)
• ⬜ numpy (numerical computing)
• ⬜ matplotlib (plotting)

Notes:

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