Learn Programming
When you're ready to learn to program, Python is a great language to start with. It has a straightforward syntax, you'll find it easy to learn, and it's extremely versatile. Once you master the basics, you'll appreciate Python's very strong online community where you can continue learning and tinkering with more advanced programming techniques. All you need is some help to get going. Learning to program with Python doesn't have to be difficult, in fact it can even be fun. This book will get you started!
Learn Programming is an introduction to programming using one of the most popular programming languages. The first few chapters give you a quick background to programming concepts and a hands-on guide to setting up your programming environment. You will then be gently introduced to the basics of programming, building up to writing your first programs! This easy-to-follow tutorial is full of exercises to practice and reinforce each new concept, as well as to give you confidence that you are ready to move on to the next lesson. As you progress, you'll learn programming topics and concepts that are ubiquitous across almost all other programming languages. By the end of the book, you'll have a solid grasp of how to write programs as well as programming best practices.
Table of Contents detailed table of contents
Unit 0 Python and Your Programming Environment
1. Lesson 1 Why Should You Learn Python?
1.1. Introducing Python
1.2. Why you should care about Python
1.2.1. A general purpose language
1.2.2. Writing in Python is intuitive
1.2.3. Challenges in Using Python
1.3. Where you are now and where you will be
1.4. Our plan for learning Python
1.4.1. First Steps
1.4.2. Practice, practice, practice, practice
1.4.3. Thinking like a programmer
1.5. Summary
2. Lesson 2 Understanding your Programming Environment
2.1. Different Python Versions
2.1.1. Python Version 3.5
2.1.2. Downloading Python Version 3.5
2.1.3. Anaconda Python Distribution
2.1.4. Integrated Development Environments
2.2. Setting up your Workspace
2.2.1. The IPython Console
2.2.2. The File Editor
2.3. Summary
Unit 1 Programming Overview, Objects, and Statements
3. Lesson 3 Basic Principles of Learning a Programming Language
3.1. Programming as a Skill
3.2. A Parallel with Baking
3.2.1. Understand the Task "bake a loaf of bread"
3.2.2. The Recipe
3.2.3. Visualizing the Recipe with Flowcharts
3.2.4. Use an Existing Recipe or Make One Up?
3.3. Think, Code, Test, Debug, Repeat
3.3.1. Understanding the Task
3.3.2. Visualizing the Task
3.3.3. Writing Pseudocode
3.4. Writing Readable Code
3.4.1. Using Descriptive and Meaningful Names
3.4.2. Commenting Your Code
3.5. Summary
4. Lesson 4 Python Variables and Expressions
4.1. Giving Names to Things
4.1.1. Math versus Programming
4.1.2. What the Computer Can and Cannot Do
4.2. Introducing Python Variables
4.2.1. Objects are Things that can be Manipulated
4.2.2. Objects have Names
4.2.3. What Object Names are Allowed?
4.2.4. Creating a Variable
4.2.5. Updating a Variable
4.3. Summary
5. Lesson 5 Object Types and Python Statements
5.1. Types of Things
5.2. Basic Type of Objects in Programming
5.2.1. Integers as Whole Numbers
5.2.2. Floating Point as Decimal Numbers
5.2.3. Booleans as True/False Data
5.2.4. Strings as Sequences of Characters
5.2.5. NoneType as the Absence of a Type
5.3. Working with Basic Types of Data Values
5.3.1. Building Blocks of Expressions
5.3.2. Converting Between Different Types
5.3.3. How Arithmetic Impacts Object Types
5.4. Summary
6. Lesson 6 CAPSTONE PROJECT: Your First Python Program
6.1. What You Know so Far
6.2. Your First Programming Task: Convert Minutes to Hours
6.2.1. Think-Code-Test-Debug
6.2.2. Divide your Task
6.2.3. Implement the Conversion Formula
6.3. Your First Python Program: One Solution
6.4. Your First Python Program: Another Solution
6.5. Checkpoint Exercises
6.6. Summary
Unit 2 Strings, Tuples, and Interacting with the User
7. Lesson 7 String Objects
7.1. Strings as Sequences of Characters
7.2. Creating a string Object
7.3. Understanding Indexing into a String
7.4. Understanding Slicing a string
7.5. Other Operations on string Objects
7.5.1. The Number of Characters in a String
7.5.2. Converting Between Letter Cases
7.5.3. Find a Substring
7.5.4. Is a Substring in the String?
7.5.5. Count how Many Times a Substring Occurs
7.5.6. Replacing Substrings
7.5.7. Mathematical Operations
7.6. Summary
8. Lesson 8 Simple Error Messages and Tuple Objects
8.1. Reading Basic Error Messages
8.1.1. Type Up Statements and Try Things Out
8.1.2. String Error Messages
8.2. Tuples as Sequences of Data
8.3. Understanding Tuple Values
8.4. Understanding Operations on Tuples
8.4.1. Getting the tuple Length
8.4.2. Indexing into and Slicing a tuple
8.4.3. Mathematical Operations
8.4.4. Swapping Objects Inside tuples
8.5. Summary
9. Lesson 9 Interacting with the User
9.1. Showing Output
9.1.1. Printing Expressions
9.1.2. Printing Multiple Objects
9.2. Getting User Input
9.2.1. Prompting the User
9.2.2. Reading the Input
9.2.3. Storing the Input in a Variable
9.2.4. Converting the User Input to a Different Type
9.2.5. Asking for More Inputs
9.3. Checkpoint Exercises
9.4. Summary
10. Lesson 10 Capstone Project: Name Mashup
10.1. The Programming Task
10.2. Understanding the Problem Statement
10.2.1. Drawing out a Sketch of the Problem
10.2.2. Coming up with a few Examples
10.2.3. Abstracting the Problem into Pseudocode
10.3. Splitting up First and Last Names
10.3.1. Finding the Space between the First and Last Name
10.3.2. Using Variables to Save Calculated Values
10.3.3. Testing what you have so Far
10.4. Storing the Halves of all Names
10.4.1. Finding the Midpoint of Names
10.5. Combining the Halves
10.6. Summary
Unit 3 Making Decisions in Your Programs
11. Lesson 11 Introducing Control Flow in Programs
11.1. Making Decisions With Conditionals
11.1.1. Yes/No Questions and True/False Statements
11.1.2. Adding a Condition to a Statement
11.2. The Code to Make the Decision
11.2.1. Coding up a Decision - an Example
11.2.2. Coding up a Decision - a General Way
11.3. Structuring Your Programs
11.3.1. Making Many Decisions
11.3.2. Making Decisions Based on Other Decision’s Outcomes
11.3.3. A More Complicated Example with Nested Conditionals
11.4. Checkpoint Exercises
11.5. Summary
12. Lesson 12 Making More Complicated Decisions
12.1. Combining Multiple Conditions
12.1.1. Conditionals are Made up of True/False Expressions
12.1.2. Operator Precedence Rules
12.2. Choosing which Lines to Execute
12.2.1. Do this or that
12.2.2. Putting it All Together
12.2.3. Thinking in Terms of Code Blocks
12.3. Checkpoint Exercises
12.4. Summary
13. Lesson 13 Capstone Project: Choose Your Own Adventure
13.1. The Programming Task
13.2. Outlining the Game Rules
13.3. Creating Different Paths
13.4. More Choices? Yes, Please!
13.5. Summary
14. Lesson 14 Repeating Tasks with Loops
14.1. Repeating a Task
14.1.1. Adding Non-Linearity to Programs
14.1.2. Infinite Repetitions
14.2. Looping a Certain Number of Times
14.2.1. for Loops
14.3. Looping N Times
14.3.1. Loops over the Common Sequence 0 to N-1
14.3.2. Unrolling Loops
14.4. Summary
Unit 4
15. Lesson 15 Customizing Loops
16. Lesson 16 Repeating Tasks while Conditions Hold
17. Lesson 17 CAPSTONE PROJECT: Escape the Maze
Unit 5
18. Lesson 18 Building Programs to Last
19. Lesson 19 Achieving Modularity and Abstraction with Functions
20. Lesson 20 Advanced Operations with Functions
21. Lesson 21 CAPSTONE PROJECT: Analyze Your Friends
Unit 6
22. Lesson 22 Introducing Collections of Data
23. Lesson 23 Python Lists
24. Lesson 24 Python Dictionaries
25. Lesson 25 Aliasing an Object
26. Lesson 26 CAPSTONE PROJECT: Plagiarism Detector
Unit 7
27. Lesson 27 Introducing Python Objects and Classes
28. Lesson 28 Working with Classes
29. Lesson 29 Object Oriented Programming
30. Lesson 30 CAPSTONE PROJECT: The Solar System
Unit 8
31. Lesson 31 Debugging
32. Lesson 32 Useful Libraries
33. Lesson 33 File Input and Output
34. Lesson 34 What is a GUI
35. Lesson 35 CAPSTONE PROJECT: Traffic Simulator
36. Lesson 36 What's Next?
37. Lesson 37 CAPSTONE PROJECT: Movie Picker
Appendixes
Appendix A: Python Cheat Sheet
Appendix B: Interesting Python Packages
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