A Practical Introduction to Python Programming

Abstract

In terms of structuring a course around this book or learning on your own, the basis is most ofPart I. The first four chapters are critically important. Chapter 5 is useful, but not all of it is critical.Chapter 6 (strings) should be done before Chapter 7 (lists). Chapter 8 contains some more advancedlist topics. Much of this can be skipped, though it is all interesting and useful. In particular, thatchapter covers list comprehensions, which I use extensively later in the book. While you can getaway without using list comprehensions, they provide an elegant and efficient way of doing things.Chapter 9 (while loops) is important. Chapter 10 contains a bunch of miscellaneous topics, all ofwhich are useful, but many can be skipped if need be. The final four chapters of Part I are aboutdictionaries, text files, functions, and object-oriented programming. Though this book was designed to be used in an introductory programming course, it is also usefulfor those with prior programming experience looking to learn Python. If you are one of thosepeople, you should be able to breeze through the first several chapters. You should find Part II tobe a concise, but not superficial, treatment on GUI programming. Part III contains information onthe features of Python that allow you to accomplish big things with surprisingly little code.