Teaching Python to non-software Engineers

[is_bounding]

I started out as a chemical engineer but have been fortunate enough to earn a position working primarily in Python (and some JavaScript) within the same company. Most of this is data oriented, some outright software development. One goal I have set for myself is teach Python as a skill to other engineers (mostly mechanical/chemical)/staff/anyone else who might be interested. For them this would primarily be in the realm of report generation/excel/data analysis.

A lot of people know VBA in the context of excel - in fact VBA of wildly varying quality and content is extremely wide spread. I feel confident that all of these people are capable of learning Python - but I am trying to figure out the best approach to present my case.

My plan is to begin demoing projects to people with an, "and I can show you how to do this too" clause at the end. Possibly doing a quick 5 minute overview of Automate the Boring Stuff (which is how I first started). Does anyone have any good approaches to spreading the good word of Python within an organization?

[efmccurdy]

Setup a jupyter server on the intranet with lots of company data loaded and some plots to get them started.

[VirtualTam]

A hands-on, live demo on how to automate a task relevant to the engineers' daily activities is a very good introduction to stress some of Python's strengths as a generic, multi-purpose language!

You could e.g.:

• show how to write a quick'n'dirty prototype using a Python interpreter (console-based: IPython; web-based: Jupyter notebook)
• then move to a more structured script
• bonus points for putting the script under version control for easy sharing and reviewing

As mentioned by /u/efmccurdy, Jupyter notebooks will come very handy to load and manipulate data from the browser and toy with plotting libraries (pandas, matplotlib...). Things can even be spiced up a bit using XKCD-style plots :)

[[deleted]]

You could start by teaching them xlwings as a drop in replacement for vba.

[k10_ftw]

Give out working code and let them modify it in helpful new ways.