ENGR 103 — Week 02: Core Elements of Programs

📖 Weekly Overview

This week we build the core elements of programs: working with text data (strings), reading user input, displaying formatted output, and making decisions with conditional branching. These tools let us start building real environmental monitoring tools.

🎯 Learning Objectives

By the end of this week, you will be able to:

Create and manipulate Python strings
Use input() and formatted output with f-strings
Write multi-branch if/elif/else programs
Apply Python's indentation rules correctly

📚 Required Reading

Guttag, "Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python" (3rd Ed)
Week 02 Reading: Ch 2.3–2.4
Complete before the first lecture of the week.

📅 This Week's Schedule

Monday: Monday: Strings, input/output, and f-strings
Friday: Friday: Operators, branching, and indentation.

✅ Assignments Due This Week

Week 02 Quiz — Due Sunday 11:59 PM on Canvas (15 questions, 15 pts)
Week 02 Assignment — Due Sunday 11:59 PM on Canvas (3 coding problems)

🔗 Resources

Lecture slides available on Canvas before each class
Textbook: Guttag Ch 1 available free at MIT OpenCourseWare
Python documentation: docs.python.org
Office hours: Check Canvas calendar for times and Zoom/room info
Course Piazza: Post questions (anonymously if preferred)