Introducing Python

Easy to understand and fun to read, this updated edition of Introducing Python is ideal for beginning programmers as well as those new to the language. Author Bill Lubanovic takes you from the basics to more involved and varied topics, mixing tutorials with cookbook-style code recipes to explain concepts in Python 3. End-of-chapter exercises help you practice what you’ve learned. You’ll gain a strong foundation in the language, including best practices for testing, debugging, code reuse, and other development tips. This book also shows you how to use Python for applications in business, science, and the arts, using various Python tools and open source packages.

Get a comprehensive, in-depth introduction to the core Python language with this hands-on book. Based on author Mark Lutz’s popular training course, this updated fifth edition will help you quickly write efficient, high-quality code with Python. It’s an ideal way to begin, whether you’re new to programming or a professional developer versed in other languages. Complete with quizzes, exercises, and helpful illustrations, this easy-to-follow, self-paced tutorial gets you started with both Python 2.7 and 3.3— the latest releases in the 3.X and 2.X lines—plus all other releases in common use today. You’ll also learn some advanced language features that recently have become more common in Python code. Explore Python’s major built-in object types such as numbers, lists, and dictionaries Create and process objects with Python statements, and learn Python’s general syntax model Use functions to avoid code redundancy and package code for reuse Organize statements, functions, and other tools into larger components with modules Dive into classes: Python’s object-oriented programming tool for structuring code Write large programs with Python’s exception-handling model and development tools Learn advanced Python tools, including decorators, descriptors, metaclasses, and Unicode processing

Learn to master basic programming tasks from scratch with real-life, scientifically relevant examples and solutions drawn from both science and engineering. Students and researchers at all levels are increasingly turning to the powerful Python programming language as an alternative to commercial packages and this fast-paced introduction moves from the basics to advanced concepts in one complete volume, enabling readers to gain proficiency quickly. Beginning with general programming concepts such as loops and functions within the core Python 3 language, and moving on to the NumPy, SciPy and Matplotlib libraries for numerical programming and data visualization, this textbook also discusses the use of Jupyter Notebooks to build rich-media, shareable documents for scientific analysis. The second edition features a new chapter on data analysis with the pandas library and comprehensive updates, and new exercises and examples. A final chapter introduces more advanced topics such as floating-point precision and algorithm stability, and extensive online resources support further study. This textbook represents a targeted package for students requiring a solid foundation in Python programming.

This book is suitable for use in a university-level first course in computing (CS1), as well as the increasingly popular course known as CS0. It is difficult for many students to master basic concepts in computer science and programming. A large portion of the confusion can be blamed on the complexity of the tools and materials that are traditionally used to teach CS1 and CS2. This textbook was written with a single overarching goal: to present the core concepts of computer science as simply as possible without being simplistic.

Easy to understand and fun to read, this updated edition of Introducing Python is ideal for beginning programmers as well as those new to the language. Author Bill Lubanovic takes you from the basics to more involved and varied topics, mixing tutorials with cookbook-style code recipes to explain concepts in Python 3. End-of-chapter exercises help you practice what you’ve learned. You’ll gain a strong foundation in the language, including best practices for testing, debugging, code reuse, and other development tips. This book also shows you how to use Python for applications in business, science, and the arts, using various Python tools and open source packages.

The new edition of an introductory text that teaches students the art of computational problem solving, covering topics ranging from simple algorithms to information visualization. This book introduces students with little or no prior programming experience to the art of computational problem solving using Python and various Python libraries, including PyLab. It provides students with skills that will enable them to make productive use of computational techniques, including some of the tools and techniques of data science for using computation to model and interpret data. The book is based on an MIT course (which became the most popular course offered through MIT's OpenCourseWare) and was developed for use not only in a conventional classroom but in in a massive open online course (MOOC). This new edition has been updated for Python 3, reorganized to make it easier to use for courses that cover only a subset of the material, and offers additional material including five new chapters. Students are introduced to Python and the basics of programming in the context of such computational concepts and techniques as exhaustive enumeration, bisection search, and efficient approximation algorithms. Although it covers such traditional topics as computational complexity and simple algorithms, the book focuses on a wide range of topics not found in most introductory texts, including information visualization, simulations to model randomness, computational techniques to understand data, and statistical techniques that inform (and misinform) as well as two related but relatively advanced topics: optimization problems and dynamic programming. This edition offers expanded material on statistics and machine learning and new chapters on Frequentist and Bayesian statistics.

What will you learn from this book? Itâ??s no secret the world around you is becoming more connected, more configurable, more programmable, more computational. You can remain a passive participant, or you can learn to code. With Head First Learn to Code youâ??ll learn how to think computationally and how to write code to make your computer, mobile device, or anything with a CPU do things for you. Using the Python programming language, youâ??ll learn step by step the core concepts of programming as well as many fundamental topics from computer science, such as data structures, storage, abstraction, recursion, and modularity. Why does this book look so different? Based on the latest research in cognitive science and learning theory, Head First Learn to Code uses a visually rich format to engage your mind, rather than a text-heavy approach that puts you to sleep. Why waste your time struggling with new concepts? This multi-sensory learning experience is designed for the way your brain really works.