You’ll start with absolutely no coding experience — and end the unit having written real Python. You’ll learn the four pieces every program is made of: variables (named boxes for data), data types (numbers, text, True/False), operators (math and comparisons), and conditionals (if/elif/else for decisions).

Repeating code by copy-pasting it three times? There’s a better way. You’ll meet for loops and while loops, which let one line of code run as many times as you want. You’ll learn to trace through code on paper — predicting what variables hold at every step — and pick up a 3-step debugging method for finding broken code.

Great coders plan before they code. You’ll learn what an algorithm is (a clear step-by-step plan), draw flowcharts with the four standard shapes, watch Bubble Sort happen in slow motion to see how computers sort lists, and explore factorials — a tiny piece of math that connects loops, multiplication, and a famously sneaky way to crash a program.

This is the unit that takes you from “I can write code that works” to “I can write code other people can read.” You’ll learn functions — the single biggest tool that separates beginner code from professional code — plus how variable scope works, systematic debugging, and the Software Development Lifecycle (Plan → Code → Test → Fix → Maintain) that every real software team follows.

Until now, a variable held one thing. Unit 5 teaches you to hold many things at once — and pick the right shape for the job. You’ll go deep on lists, meet dictionaries (the most useful data structure in all of programming), use tuples for fixed groups of values, and treat strings like the data they really are. Lists of dicts is how every modern app — Spotify, Instagram, your phone’s contacts — actually stores information.

This is the unit that turns a script into a real application. You’ll learn to save data to files and reload it later, use JSON (the data format every web app on the planet speaks), catch errors with try / except so missing files don’t crash your program, and use Python modules — both built-in ones and your own.

Code stops thinking about data and functions as separate things — they combine into objects. You’ll write your first classes (blueprints), create objects from them, learn how self and __init__ work, and use inheritance to share code between related classes without copying. This is how nearly every video game and app on your phone is actually structured.

Your code stops being alone on your computer and joins the rest of the internet. You’ll learn what APIs are, how HTTP requests actually work, use the requests library to pull live data into your program, handle network errors gracefully, and cache responses so you don’t hammer servers. The same three-line pattern works against thousands of public APIs.

This is the unit where you become a computer scientist. You’ll learn the four pillars of computational thinking — decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction, algorithmic design — and see how two different algorithms can solve the same problem at wildly different speeds. Plus the math underneath everything: binary numbers, logic gates, and Python’s set type.

The course finale. Two big topics that every working developer needs: databases (the right tool for storing real data) and ethics (the responsibilities that come with writing code that affects people). You’ll use SQLite, learn SQL (the language of databases), perform CRUD operations (Create, Read, Update, Delete), and write a real ethics statement for your project.