This repository contains the course materials for the precourse on computer programming with python for Master in City and Technology and Master in Robotics and Advanced Construction students.
Computers have been supporting all sorts of human activities for more than seven decades. Current development of information sciences have placed computer programming in the spotlight and has made it appealing to multiple areas of knowledge areas due to the wide range of successful applications seen every year. Capabilities needed to program computers are not as extraordinary as commonly though. Therefore, architecture and construction industries have successfully adopted computers and software as a transversal layer that support multiple phases of their projects (e.g., analysis, design, engineering or production). Current professionals and practitioners need to embrace programming and develop further their IT skills continuously, no matter if this is for data science, urban design, or intervening the physical world.
Nowadays, Python has become a mainstream programming language widely adopted in relevant fields such as data science and physical computing. The open-source community have boosted the way people learn how to code and the type of resources available. This course aims at providing the fundamental concepts of programming in python together with practical applications and examples of applications in advanced architecture.
The computer programming with python precourse was designed as the initial contact for IAAC students from MaCT and MRAC programs with a discipline which is becoming a must-have skill for all kind of professionals. Through a series of lectures, two IAC faculty members will guide students from the fundamental concepts of computer programming and its implementation using the python programming language to common routines for integrating external libraries, third-party source code and data visualization.
The course is designed to have four parts. Part one goes across the fundamental concepts of computer programming from the scripts themselves and their parts, variables, and arithmetic operators. Part two introduces functions, conditional and loops as the commonly used structures that define the workflow of programs. Part three presents functions, libraries and external source code interaction as well as the way to use the most common source code repository, GitHub. Fourth and last part briefly introduces the two applications of computer programming that students will develop further in their studies. On the one hand, data science with a basic use of graphics and the matplotlib library and, on the other hand, physical computing, working with inputs and outputs of different devices, recording different types of sensory information.
After the course, students will have a clear perspective of the principles of computer programming and basic applications for advance architecture, urban analytics, physical computing and robotics. Students will produce different scripts in which they apply the concepts explained. All exercises will become a GitHub repository that, together with the reference documentation, will serve for future references during the masterclasses. Both MaCT and MRAC programs will build upon this course a series of courses to develop further student’s programming skills as well as to apply such skills in problem-solving, design and analysis tasks commonly seen in the field of advanced architecture.
