2026 Mar 2nd – UQ PUG 26

Welcome to UQ Python User Group! Check out our general info for how we work and what we do. Below you’ll find the details of this month’s gathering.

Overview

Welcome to the March UQ PUG! Today we begin our 9-month series through The Python Tutorial.

Structure

  1. We start today by adding our names to the table below
  2. Add your questions to this page
  3. This month’s presentation
  4. Finally, we spend the rest of the session answering the questions you’ve brought!

Teams

If you’d like to receive regular updates and post questions during the month, join our Teams channel!

Training Resources

We offer Python training sessions and resources, you can find our introductory guide here.

Introduce yourself

What’s your name? Where are you from? Why are you here?
Cameron UQ Library & SMP To share and help answer questions
Steph Library to learn more about Python!
Nick Library to help and learn
Senura Finance and Economics Coincidence
Francesca Engineering (1st Year) Get a basic understanding of Python
Naliya UQ Staff - Data Analyst from Ace Want to improve Python coding skill
Anastasia Mathematics and Science 1st year undergraduate learning the basics of python for computer science & possibly astrophysics in the future?
Edison PhD student in Civil Engineering Modelling of hydraulics and hydrogeology
Jessy PhD student in Public Health learn more about Python
Duncan SPPS Senior Admin Officer using Python to automate admin tasks
Soneath (Jenny) PhD student Earth observation data analysis

Questions

If you have any Python questions you’d like to explore with the group, please put your question and name in the sections below.

If you think you can help, feel free to contribute to the answers section!

Python Tutorial vs Python training

What’s the difference between The Python Tutorial and our usual weekly Python training?

Answers

  • Our weekly training is set up to cover more of a data analysis focus, whereas The Python Tutorial gives a broad overview of how Python works.

Python in Windows PowerShell

How do I run python through Windows PowerShell?

Answers

Assuming you have Python installed in a location that your computer knows about (not always an obvious task), then run

python

in a PowerShell prompt to launch the interpreter.

A few things to note (see the docs for details) * Just python will launch the interpreter, where you run code line-by-line * If you have a Python script called “scriptname.py” (or any other name), python scriptname.py will run the file * python -c ... runs Python commands manually sent in * python -m ... runs a module. For example, python -m pip install ... runs the pip module (useful if your computer can’t find pip but can find python)

Python practice

How can I practice my Python?

Answers

  • Like any muscle, you have to practice.
  • Come to UQPUG for that exposure to the language.
  • Give yourself a project so that you have a use-case to apply your python to that project
  • Teach/tutor/help others to learn
  • Play - See if you can use Python code to do random things
  • Automate boring things

Python for robotics

Where can I learn Python for robotics?

Answers

  • If you learn good python foundations, that might be helpful
  • This free training course exists, but I can’t confirm how good it is https://www.theconstruct.ai/robotigniteacademy_learnros/ros-courses-library/python-robotics/

Web scraping / HTML manipulation / Copilot

Duncan - I’ve used copilot to write a python script to download course profiles as a single page but it’s producing html encoding errors. How to fix?

Answers

We had an extended discussion, including about

  • Breaking into sections
  • Understanding complex copilot-generated code
  • Encodings (UTF-8 vs CP-1252) may have been causing main problems