I really recommend taking the Computational Investing class in it's second iteration.
The first iteration of the course was a great introduction but definitely a work in progress. The course started with Excel modelling of a basic investing strategy to maximise the sharp and sortino ratios. The class continued with backtesting and event modelling using QSTK. Many students dropped out because of an insufficient introduction to python and pandas. This should now be improved in the second iteration.
I look forward to taking the class again and using the skills in Quantopian and Zipline.