PCAP study guide
PCAP · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
PCAP™ – Certified Associate in Python Programming is an associate-level, general-purpose Python credential offered through the Python Institute's certification track, delivered via Edube Interactive (OpenEDG Testing Service) and priced at USD 295. It is aimed at candidates who already write Python and want to demonstrate that they can design, develop, and improve multi-module applications rather than single-file scripts. The exam is divided into five weighted sections: Object-Oriented Programming carries the most weight at 34% (12 items), followed by Miscellaneous topics - list comprehensions, lambdas, closures, and I/O - at 22% (9 items), Strings at 18% (8 items), Exceptions at 14% (5 items), and Modules and Packages at 12% (6 items), for 40 items in total. Items are single-select, multiple-select, coding, scenario-based, and interactive, and each is worth a maximum of 40 points, with the raw score normalized to a percentage afterwards. The PCAP study guide has 5 sections and about 1,289 words.
01Modules and Packages
A module is simply a .py file; a package is a directory containing an init .py (in classic layouts) and submodules. Candidates must know the import machinery: import x binds the module object x in the current namespace, while from x import y binds the object y directly.
293 words, about 1 min02Exceptions
Exceptions are objects derived from BaseException ; application errors inherit from Exception . Candidates must master try/except/else/finally ordering: else runs only if no exception occurred, and finally always runs, even after return or an uncaught exception.
239 words, about 1 min03Strings
Strings are immutable sequences of Unicode code points. Candidates must know indexing, slicing ( s[start:stop:step] , negative indices, omitted bounds), concatenation with + , repetition with , and membership with in .
231 words, about 1 min04Object-Oriented Programming
Candidates must understand classes, instances, init , self , instance versus class attributes, and the method resolution order (MRO) for inheritance. Instance attributes live in obj.
250 words, about 1 min05Miscellaneous: Comprehensions, Lambdas, Closures, I/O
List comprehensions [expr for x in it if cond] build lists eagerly; generator expressions (expr for x in it) are lazy. Dict/set comprehensions use {k: v ...} and {x ...} .
276 words, about 1 min