The Coder's Apprentice: Learning Programming with Python 3 (Version 1.1)

This book is aimed at teaching Python 3 to students and teenagers who are completely new to programming. Contrary to many of the other books that teach Python programming, this book assumes no previous knowledge of programming on the part of the students, and contains numerous exercises that allow students to train their programming skills. How many times have you thought about learning how to code but got discouraged because you had no technical background, didn't have the time to learn, or you just didn't think you were smart enough? Would you like to learn the basics of python programming even if you are a complete novice? If so, this book can help you. A concise. Simple. Newby friendly style of teaching that lends itself well to beginners Chapters that have been sliced into bite-size chunks to give you the information you need (at that point in time) so you're not overwhelmed. Lots of simple, step-by-step examples and illustrations are used to emphasis key conceptsand help improve your understanding Each practice exercise builds on concepts discussed in previous chapters so your learning is reinforced as you progress. Topics are carefully selected to give you a broad exposure to Python, while not overwhelming you with too much (potentially unnecessary) information. An end of chapter summary is presented to give you key take aways that help you solidify your understanding Preface Introduction How to use this book Prerequisites and assumptions Why Python? Python's limitations as a programming language What does it mean ``to think like a programmer?'' The art of programming Start small, grow big Python 2 or Python 3? Practice Using Python Getting Python Creating Python programs Running Python programs Reference material Expressions Displaying results Data types Expressions Style Variables Variables and values Variable names Debugging variables Soft typing Shorthand operators Comments Simple Functions Elements of a function Some basic functions Modules Conditions Boolean expressions Conditional statements Early exits Case matching Iterations while loop for loop Loop control statements Nested loops The loop-and-a-half Being smart about loops On designing algorithms Functions Why create functions? Creating functions Scope and lifetime Managing program complexity Modules Anonymous functions Recursion What is recursion? Recursive definitions Strings What you already know about strings Multi-line strings Escape sequences Accessing characters of a string Strings are immutable string methods Character encoding Tuples Using tuples Tuples are immutable Applications of tuples Lists List basics Lists are mutable Lists and operators List methods Aliasing Nested lists List casting List comprehensions Dictionaries Basics of dictionaries Dictionary methods Keys Storing complicated values Lookup speed Sets Basics of sets Set methods Frozensets Operating System Basics of operating systems Command prompt File system os functions Text Files Flat text files Reading text files Writing text files Appending to text files os.path methods File encoding Exceptions Errors and exceptions Exception handling File handling exceptions Raising exceptions Binary Files Opening and closing binary files Reading a binary file Writing a binary file Positioning the file pointer Bitwise Operators Bits and bytes Manipulating bits Usefulness of bitwise operations Object Orientation The object oriented world Classes and objects Methods Nesting objects Memory management Operator Overloading The idea behind operator overloading Comparisons Calculations Unary operators Sequences Inheritance Class inheritance Interfaces Iterators and Generators Iterators Generators itertools module Command Line Processing The command line Flexible command line processing Regular Expressions Regular expressions with Python Writing regular expressions Grouping Replacing File Formats Comma-Separated Values (CSV) Pickling JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) HTML and XML Various Useful Modules datetime collections urllib glob statistics Troubleshooting Differences with Python 2 pcinput.py pcmaze.py Test Text Files Answers to Exercises