A Practical Introduction to Python Programming

Book Details

Author	Brian Heinold
Publisher	Mount St. Mary's University
Published	2012
Edition	1
Paperback	263 pages
Language	English
License	Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Book Description

This book originated as approximately 30 pages of notes intended for students in the author's introductory programming class at Mount St. Mary's University. Recognizing that most of these students had no prior programming experience, the author tailored his approach accordingly. He consciously omits many technical details and occasionally oversimplifies concepts. While some of these details are addressed later in the book, others are never fully explored. The book is not designed to be comprehensive, and the author recommends that readers consult other resources, such as additional books and the Python documentation, to fill in any gaps.

The programming style emphasized in the book reflects the author's personal preferences, focusing on short programs, often of a mathematical nature, small utilities for automating tasks, and simple computer games. The content is based on the topics the author has found most useful or interesting throughout his own programming experience, and the book serves, in part, as a personal documentation of those things. It is not intended to provide thorough preparation for a career in software engineering. The author suggests that interested readers should progress from this book to ones that offer more depth in computer science and the design of large, complex programs.

This book is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (CC BY-NC-SA), which means that you are free to copy, distribute, and modify it, as long as you credit the original author, don't use it for commercial purposes, and share any adaptations under the same license.