It’s no secret Austin has become one of America’s favorite new tech hubs. As the city’s population continues to swell, so, too, does its prominence within the tech realm. And while tourists still flock to its quaint streets for live music and small-town charm, it seems that the Capital City is trading in its Western boots for a taste of the tech life, which means great things for the city’s infrastructure, as well as its global status. With the likes of Apple, Google and Facebook looking to expand in Austin, there is a sudden influx of techies across the area, as well as a demand for popular tech skills.
One such skill that is highly sought-after among tech job seekers is an understanding of the Python programming language. Known for its clear, logical code, Python has grown steadily in popularity since its conception in the 1980s at the hands of the Dutch programmer Guido van Rossum, whose interest in the British TV series “Monty Python” gave the language its name. But while the idea of learning Python may seem daunting to some, there are plenty of opportunities to learn the trade. Austin has many Python training courses and bootcamps for those who wish to receive a thorough coding education. From in-person bootcamps to online courses, these nine Austin Python training courses and bootcamps will equip you with the skills you need to dominate the tech industry.
Python Training Courses in Austin to Know
- General Assembly
- Flatiron School
- Data Science Dojo
- Codecademy
- DataCamp
- HarvardX
Location: Downtown Austin
Course overview: General Assembly offers a four-month, full-time data science immersive program with a focus on Python, as well as a part-time Python programming course. The data science immersive program encompasses data science essentials, including data mining, statistical modeling, Python programming, recommender systems, neural networks and computer vision models to power business forecasts and drive decision-making and strategy. Students will also compile compelling stakeholder presentations and data visualizations as they collaborate with software engineering and UX design students or real-world clients. The part-time course covers Python and programming fundamentals, including numerical variables, control flow, function arguments, troubleshooting, modules and libraries and data visualization.
Pricing: $15,950 for the full-time program and $3,950 for the part-time course.
Location: Downtown Austin
Course overview: Flatiron School provides an online data science course that focuses heavily on Python. The course begins with Python fundamentals, including how to use Jupyter Notebooks, working with popular Python libraries like Pandas and NumPy and using Git and GitHub. For the remainder of the course, students will cover various other topics in data science, such as data structures, relational databases, SQL, probability theory, Bayes Theorem, linear algebra, distance metrics, decision trees, hyperparameter tuning, neural networks and text vectorization. Students can choose to take the course full time for five months, part time for 10 months, or they can choose an entirely self-paced option, all of which cover the same material at the same price.
Pricing: $15,000
Location: Downtown Austin
Course overview: Data Science Dojo offers a five-day, in-person data science bootcamp, which covers the fundamentals of Python programming. Comprised of in-class lectures, discussions, coding exercises and model building labs, the bootcamp begins with an introduction to data science fundamentals, data exploration, visualization, feature engineering and predictive analytics. The course then dives into more specific topics in data science, including modeling unstructured data, recommenders and AB testing, regression, data mining, Python, R programming and Azure machine learning. Students conclude the course by taking part in an all-class Kaggle competition and a networking dinner.
Pricing: $2,659.99 for Dojo, $2,799.99 for Guru and $4,049.99 for Sensei.
Location: Seaholm District
Course overview: Galvanize offers a 13-week data science immersive bootcamp with a focus on Python, as well as a six-week Python introductory course, both of which are offered at their Austin campus. The bootcamp opens with a lesson in Python fundamentals, during which time students learn statistical analysis, including frequentist and Bayesian methods. For the remainder of the course, students cover machine learning concepts like classification, regression and clustering using structured and unstructured data sets, as well as natural language processing, recommender systems, neural networks and time-series data. Throughout the bootcamp, students complete three capstone projects and several group case studies. The Python introductory course introduces students to the building blocks of data, including environmental setup, data science workflow and object-oriented programming. Students will also master popular data science libraries, such as Matplotlib, Pandas and Sklearn.
Pricing: $17,980 for the bootcamp and $750 for the part-time course.
Location: Spicewood Springs (North Austin)
Course overview: At its Austin location, ONLC Training Centers offers a variety of Python training courses geared towards beginners and intermediate learners. In the introductory Python programming course, students learn a wide range of topics relating to the subject, such as function and module design, file consumption and exception handling, database connectivity and graphical user interface (GUI) development. The Introduction to Python 3 course encompasses Python fundamentals, including how to work with and manipulate strings, perform math operations, work with Python sequences and collect user input and output results. Throughout the Advanced Python 3 programming course, students will cover more advanced Python topics, such as mapping and filtering, lambda functions, working with databases, writing object-oriented code and learning about Unicode and text encoding.
Pricing: $1,315 for the introductory Python programming course, $1,645 for the Introduction to Python 3 course and $1,095 for the Advanced Python 3 programming course.
Location: Online
Course overview: Codecademy provides a variety of online Python courses geared towards both beginners and intermediate learners. The 10-week Analyze Data with Python course teaches students the fundamentals of data analysis while building their Python skills, covering topics like NumPy and Jupyter Notebooks. In the seven-week Analyzing Financial Data with Python course, students discover how to process, analyze and visualize financial data, learning skills like portfolio optimization and financial statistics and APIs. Geared towards intermediate learners, the seven-week Get Started with Machine Learning course teaches students how to build machine learning models with Python. During the six-week Visualize Data with Python course, students will learn how to create custom charts and graphs and make data-driven arguments. Those who want unlimited access to projects and courses can purchase Codecademy’s Pro plan.
Pricing: Free for basic and $19.99 per month for Pro.
Location: Online
Course overview: DataCamp offers a wide range of online, self-paced Python training courses, which vary in scope and difficulty. The Introduction to Python course will teach students how to store and manipulate data, as well as helpful data science tools to conduct their own analyses, covering topics like functions and packages and NumPy. In the Introduction to Deep Learning in Python course, students will learn how to use deep learning with Keras 2.0, including how to optimize a neural network with backward propagation. DataCamp also offers several career track courses geared towards those pursuing careers as data engineers, data scientists or machine learning scientists who have previous Python and SQL training. Those who desire access to complete course chapters, as well as the site’s skill and career tracks can upgrade to a paid plan.
Pricing: Free for access to the first chapter of each course, $29 per month for the monthly subscription and $25 per month for the yearly subscription.
Location: Online
Course overview: Taught by professors from the Georgia Institute of Technology, GTx’s Introduction to Python Programming course is self-paced and takes approximately five months to complete. Throughout the course, students will learn about various topics relating to Python, including the usage of the fundamental atoms of programming like variables and mathematical operators, control structures for developing dynamic programs, such as conditionals and loops, as well as the core data structures for creating useful programs like lists and dictionaries. The course material is the same used at Georgia Tech for its Introduction to Computing course and includes short videos, live programming problems and multiple choice questions to give students constant feedback on their progress and understanding.
Pricing: $396
Location: Online
Course overview: HarvardX offers a variety of online Python training courses, which are taught by Harvard professors. In the 11-week Introduction to Computer Science course, students learn a wide range of skills, including concepts like abstraction, algorithms and data structures, as well as how to think algorithmically and solve programming problems efficiently. The 10-week CS50 for Lawyers course is an introductory computer science course designed specifically for lawyers and law students, covering computational thinking, programming languages, cryptography and cybersecurity. In the five-week Using Python for Research course, students learn Python 3 programming basics, Python tools like NumPy and SciPy modules and how to apply these tools in practical settings.
Pricing: Free
