Python: Real-World Data Science

Case study

Let's walk through test-driven development by writing a small, tested, cryptography application. Don't worry, you won't need to understand the mathematics behind complicated modern encryption algorithms such as Threefish or RSA. Instead, we'll be implementing a sixteenth-century algorithm known as the Vigenère cipher. The application simply needs to be able to encode and decode a message, given an encoding keyword, using this cipher.

First, we need to understand how the cipher works if we apply it manually (without a computer). We start with a table like this:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B D E F G H I J K L M N ...