Building on your prior knowledge of variables and operators, this course gets into the meat of programming. Organized into five chapters, this course starts by covering the fundamentals of what control structures are and what they do, then moves on to four common control structures in Python. Conditionals let you modify what your program does based on the values of incoming variables. Loops let you repeat tasks for multiple values or while certain conditions hold true. Functions let you encapsulate complex reasoning into reusable chunks of code. Error handling lets you intelligently recover from anticipated and unanticipated glitches.

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to write complex programs in Python that perform useful reasoning. For example, you could write a program that calculates your weight on other planets, calculates the standard deviation of a series of numbers, or checks for the validity of an incoming password.

Structurally, the course is comprised of several parts. Instruction is delivered via a series of short (2-3 minute) videos. In between those videos, you’ll complete both multiple choice questions and coding problems to demonstrate your knowledge of the material that was just covered.