A Practical Introduction to Python Programming

My goal here is for something that is partly a tutorial and partly a reference book. I like how tutorials get you up and running quickly, but they can often be a little wordy and disorganized. Reference books contain a lot of good information, but they are are often too terse, and they don’t often give you a sense of what is important. My aim here is for something in the spirit of a tutorial but still useful as a reference. I summarize information in tables and give a lot of short example programs. I also like to jump right into things and fill in background information as I go, rather than covering the background material first.
This book started out as about 30 pages of notes for students in my introductory programming class atMountSt. Mary’sUniversity. Mostofthesestudentshavenopriorprogrammingexperience, and that has affected my approach. I leave out a lot of technical details and sometimes I oversimplify things. Some of these details are filled in later in the book, though other details are never filled in. But this book is not designed to cover everything, and I recommend reading other books and the Python documentation to fill in the gaps.
The style of programming in this book is geared towards the kinds of programming things I like to do—short programs, often of a mathematical nature, small utilities to make my life easier, and small computer games. In fact, the things I cover in the book are the things that I have found most useful or interesting in my programming experience, and this book serves partly to document those things for myself. Thisbookisnotdesignedasathoroughpreparationforacareerinsoftwareengineering. Interested readers should progress from this book to a book that has more on computer science and the design and organization of large programs.