PYTHON FOR OCEANOGRAPHERS

The content in this repository aims to give an introduction to the Python
programming language for oceanographic data analysis applications, especially
in science. It provides full documentation, source code and data to a possible
4-day short course. The course is still in its early infancy and will initially
be written for a Portuguese speaking audience with future English translation
to be provided.

Python is a powerful dynamic programming language and an affordable and
open source alternative to commercial scientific analysis software like
Matlab(R) or IDL(R). Although there are other open source alternatives for
data analysis and statistics like Octave, Scilab, R or GDL, for example, Python
is a very portable, flexible, concise, easy reading, extensible, interactive,
multi-platform and increasingly popular programming language. Even with a broad
range of books and tutorials on Python available for reference, online and
off-line, there still is a lack in references for the oceanographic community.

This guide and all in it contained source code does not provide a complete
introduction to computer programming but rather an example-driven applied
approach. For an introduction to computer programming there is Allen Downey's
'Think Python: how to think like a computer scientist' and other online
options, for example. The guide is divided into five chapters in which the first
is for self-study and to get Python installed and the first programmes working.
The following 4 chapters are intended to be used as accompanying text to a
4-day practical short course.


Revision:
    2011-04-20 17:43 -0300