CIT 411 is a hands-on, undergraduate-level Python programming course delivered across 8 progressive weeks. Students develop the skills required to design, write, debug, package, and ship working Python applications — building real working code on real Python installations (Python 3.12+ is free) rather than learning through textbook exercises alone.
The course is structured as a progressive arc from foundations to advanced topics. Weeks 1-4 establish Python fundamentals: development environment setup, primitive types and control flow, data structures and iteration, functions and functional patterns, and the file I/O / error handling / API skills that mark the transition from 'student exercises' to 'real programs.' Weeks 5-8 introduce the advanced topics: recursion as a problem-solving technique, modules and packages for organizing reusable code, classes and objects for object-oriented design, and methods and dunder methods that polish a class to professional quality. Week 8 culminates in a portfolio-quality capstone project that integrates every concept from the course.
Each week is anchored to a realistic project scenario: a personal finance tracker, a retail inventory analyzer, a marketing CSV cleaning pipeline, a weather data aggregator, a directory tree analyzer with fractal generator, a reusable utility library, an OOP inventory system, and a student-chosen capstone application. The scenario format ensures students develop not only Python syntax fluency but also the design judgment expected of a professional developer.
A defining feature of CIT 411 is the explicit integration of generative AI throughout the development lifecycle. Students apply AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot) every week to learning new syntax, code review, refactoring, debugging, API design, and architecture decisions — and they critically evaluate every AI output against the official Python documentation and against actual measured behavior. The course produces graduates who can join a Python team and contribute on day one, and who can integrate AI into their professional practice transparently and effectively.
- Teacher: Parnell Dujour