Idiot’s Guides: Beginning Programming

Idiot’s Guides: Beginning Programming takes the fear out of learning programming by teaching readers the basics with Python, an open-source (free) environment which is considered one of the easiest languages to learn. Readers will learn not only the “how” of programming in Python, but the “why,” so they understand how the code really works and how it relates to other programming languages. Included are simple coding projects that reinforce lessons.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Background on Computers and Terminology
Chapter 1 So You Want to Program Computers
Chapter 2 Programming with Python
Chapter 3 Your First Python Program

Part 2: Learning Python
Chapter 4 Variables
Chapter 5 Conditional Programming
Chapter 6 Loops
Chapter 7 Arrays
Chapter 8 String Basics
Chapter 9 The New Way of Strings

Part 3: Basic Programming Concepts
Chapter 10 Functions
Chapter 11 Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?
Chapter 12 Error Handling, or When Things Go Terribly Wrong
Chapter 13 Files, Directories, and Other Things That Persist
Chapter 14 Programming with Class(es)

Part 4: Working with the Python Environment
Chapter 15 Graphics and Python
Chapter 16 Packages and Modules
Chapter 17 Designing Programs
Chapter 18 Testing
Chapter 19 The Python Debugger and Debugging