# Python for Automation Canonical URL: ## Overview In this class, you’ll learn how to automate time-consuming tasks using Python, such as gathering data from websites. Whether your interests lie in social media, e-commerce, real estate, travel, or government affairs, the ability to instantly collect up-to-date data from across the web can be a significant advantage. You'll use Python code to extract the precise data you need from a website. Along the way, you’ll also learn to write loops that allow your web scraping code to process a large number of pages for you. These fundamentals will be coupled with real-life examples of programs that scrape valuable data from major websites. The class will also cover common pitfalls, how to run your programs on a schedule, and different formats for storing your scraped data. This course is perfect for any programming beginner to be introduced to the powerful world of coding, and is a great fit for students with a clearly defined goal of using Python for web or software development. This course is included in our [Data Science Certificate](/certificates/data-science). ## What you'll learn - Understand how websites are structured with HTML and CSS to identify elements for data extraction - Learn Python fundamentals, such as variables, data types, conditionals, loops, and list manipulation - Use the Requests and Beautiful Soup libraries to perform web scraping and target specific content - Write loops to automate web scraping across multiple pages and streamline repetitive tasks - Store scraped data in different formats, such as text files and CSVs, for analysis and reporting - Schedule Python scripts to run on a regular basis, enabling continuous data collection and automating workflows ## Prerequisites Participants should have knowledge equivalent to our [Python for Data Science Bootcamp](/classes/python-data-science-bootcamp-nyc) course. ## Curriculum ### Section 1 #### Introduction to HTML/CSS (Online) - How a website is served - Anatomy of a web page - HTML tags - IDs - CSS classes #### Python Part 1 - Integers + Floats - Variables - Strings - Methods + Functions ### Section 2 #### Webscraping Exercise Part 1 - Introduction to using packages - Requests packages - Performing a GET request - String manipulation - Debugging a Python script #### Python Part 2 - Booleans - Conditional Statements - Lists - Indexing into strings + lists - Looping over lists ### Section 3 #### Webscraping Exercises Part 2 - Beautiful Soup package - Honing in on data - Common webscraping pitfalls - Using loops in webscraping #### Storage and Scheduling - Text files - CSVs - Scheduling a Python Script ## Schedule - Jun 26, 2026 10:00am–5:00pm — NYC - Jun 30, 2026 – Jul 2, 2026 — NYC - Aug 14, 2026 10:00am–5:00pm — NYC - Sep 29, 2026 10:00am–5:00pm — NYC - Oct 13, 2026 – Oct 15, 2026 — NYC - Oct 18, 2026 10:00am–5:00pm — NYC - Nov 23, 2026 10:00am–5:00pm — NYC - Feb 4, 2027 – Feb 9, 2027 — NYC - Feb 28, 2027 10:00am–5:00pm — NYC ## Instructors ### Art Yudin — Program Director & Senior Instructor Art Yudin is a FinTech enthusiast who has a great passion for coding and teaching. Art is the founder and CEO of Practical Programming (a Noble Desktop partner company), a leading training company for aspiring developers and data scientists. Currently, Art develops financial services software and leads classes and workshops at Practical Programming in New York and Chicago. He is the author of several coding publications including "Building Versatile Mobile Apps with Python and REST with React and Django." ### Brian McClain — Program Director & Senior Instructor Brian McClain is an experienced instructor, curriculum developer, and web developer. Brian served as Director for a coding bootcamp before joining Noble Desktop in 2022, where he is now a lead instructor and course developer for both JavaScript and Python. He teaches Web Development, JavaScript, Python for Data Science, Machine Learning, and AI. Prior to Noble, he taught Python Data Science and Machine Learning as an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Westchester County College. Brian is also an active industry professional in the field of generative AI app development. His website and iOS app, Artmink, provides appraisals of art and antiques from user-uploaded images. ### Colin Jaffe — Instructor Colin Jaffe is a programmer, writer, and teacher with a passion for creative code, customizable computing environments, and simple puns. He loves teaching code, from the fundamentals of algorithmic thinking to the business logic and user flow of application building—he particularly enjoys teaching JavaScript, Python, API design, and front-end frameworks. Colin has taught code to a diverse group of students since learning to code himself, including young men of color at All-Star Code, elementary school kids at The Coding Space, and marginalized groups at Pursuit. Colin lives in Brooklyn with his wife, two kids, and many intricate board games. ### Kash Sudhakar — Instructor Kash specializes in full-stack web development, data analysis & visualization, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and applied computer science. With over 6 years of teaching, curriculum, and leadership experience across coding boot camps and other educational institutions, combined with over 3 years of professional software engineering and data science expertise, he's driven to help shape the next generation of technologists and creative coders. ## Pricing **Tuition:** $425