This course is designed to provide linguistics students with the foundational programming skills essential for modern computational linguistics and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Recognizing the transformative impact of large language models, this course bridges fundamental programming concepts with their application in the era of generative AI. Students will begin with the Unix command line to efficiently manipulate text data, and then learn the fundamentals of Python programming, including core data structures. The curriculum will cover essential data science libraries like NumPy and Pandas, and NLP-specific libraries such as NLTK. A significant portion of the course is dedicated to introducing the Transformers library, enabling students to leverage pre-trained models for various NLP tasks. This hands-on, project-based course aims to equip students with the practical skills needed for advanced studies and research in computational linguistics.