An introduction to Python
Python is a programming language. It’s widely used in the scientific community due to the broad selection of feature-rich, actively maintained libraries. This means that a lot of software has already been written to solve problems common to our field, so you can concentrate on the interesting stuff!
In LHCb, Python is used for lots of things, particularly for writing files that make ntuples for you, but also for many analyses. Unless you are absolutely forced to use another language by external constraints, such as your fit program already being written in C++, we recommend using Python, even if you’re not comfortable with it right now. This is because there’s a large support group of other people who can help you with problems you might have down the line, and because we believe it’s the best tool, all in all, for data analysis.
Aim of these lessons
There are already plenty of superb guides on the Internet for learning Python, all of which will be more comprehensive than this one. This particular guide exists because it closely follows what we teach at the Starterkit, where we teach Python over the course of one day, and so only teaches you what you need to follow along in the lessons that are specific to high-energy physics.
We expect you to be familiar with at least one other programming language, so
that you understand sentences like “we assign value 123 to variable abc” and
“this is a function which accepts two arguments”. You should also understand
the basics of using a text editor, which you use to write code to a file
somewhere, and then you can somehow run the contents using commands in your
terminal to make stuff happen.
Sounds good? Then let’s get going!