When we talk about data science, we must understand that programming is the important and integral aspect of it.
Programming is necessary to implement computational solutions to data science problems.
Data scientists are required to write code even if are you are visualizing data, performing exploratory data analysis, or implementing machine learning models. Whether you are using existing code bases and libraries or coding from scratch, writing code as a data scientist is required.
If you are an aspiring data scientist or intent to learning programing, you should have solid understanding of computational approaches to problem solving, computer science principles, and the fundamentals of programming. Moreover, all independent of implementation programming language.
Go to the Course
To pickup and learn programming and get good mastery over concepts of computer science, your approach should be to look for university courses, including lectures, readings, slides, and assignments.
We have found one highly informative course on Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python offered by MIT via its open courseware. To make it easy to navigate, we have arranged it in simple flow. This course is taught by Dr. Ana Bell, Prof. Eric Grimson, and Prof. John Guttag, and impart substantial knowledge about computer science fundamentals upon newcomers to programming.
If you are pursuing engineering in computer science or allied branches, you must go through all the lectures and grab the knowledge needed to achieve better understanding of your subject.
The concepts are taught using Python, the most sought after language today. The course’s accompanying textbook, Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python, is, unfortunately, not free. However, it can be picked up for a reasonable price here at Amazon if you are interested in following along with the readings. Else you can study from the notes, video lectures for free.
Course Introduction
Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python is intended for students with little or no programming experience. It aims to provide students with an understanding of the role computation can play in solving problems and to help students, regardless of their major, feel justifiably confident of their ability to write small programs that allow them to accomplish useful goals. The class uses the Python 3.5 programming language.