Preface

Perhaps by the time I write a third edition, this book will have a proper preface – one in which the author (me) waxes philosophically about the wonders of this textbook, how it was a labor of love, and how you should think very intentionally about the book’s organization despite the fact that you (the reader) really don’t care. For now, I shall simply thank the following.

• My wife Lisa and my children Ian, Noah, and Tatum for their support of my teaching career, and especially my daughter Tatum for drawing the cover for the first edition of this book. She was only 11 years old at the time she drew the cover. It was pretty good for an 11-year-old. Her first edition cover is included below for posterity.

• My CMSC 181 Intro to Computer Science students from Fall 2016 and Fall 2017 for providing detailed and thoughtful feedback on the first draft and first edition of this book.

• All CMSC 181 students since Fall 2018 who have engaged with the book, offered comments, and provided corrections while being kind about it.

• Everyone at Buena Vista University for making the university a remarkable place, especially my colleagues in computer science: Nathan Backman and Shawn Stone.

• To DALL-E and to generative AI for creating the cover art for the second edition of the book. I had hoped to “hire” my (at the time) 18-year-old daughter to do the second cover, too, but she was occupied doing what she should be doing: living the life of a busy college student.

• My God, for allowing me to live and serve as I do.

On to Python!

Cover for the first edition, illustrated by then 11-year-old Tatum Shepherd

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Contents:

• 1. Basic I/O, Statements, Expressions, Variables, and Types
  • 1.1. Getting set up to program
  • 1.2. The print statement
  • 1.3. The input statement
  • 1.4. Assignment statements
  • 1.5. Values, types, expressions, and statements
  • 1.6. Calling functions
  • 1.7. Handy functions
  • 1.8. Math functions
  • 1.9. Random functions
  • 1.10. Comments
  • 1.11. Exercises
• 2. Conditionals
  • 2.1. The if statement and the Boolean type
  • 2.2. elif and Boolean Operators
  • 2.3. Nuances of Boolean operators
  • 2.4. Exercises
• 3. Loops and String Manipulation
  • 3.1. while loops
  • 3.2. Manipulating and printing strings
  • 3.3. for loops
  • 3.4. for loops with strings, revisited
  • 3.5. Loops for input validation and translation
  • 3.6. Nested loops
  • 3.7. Exercises
• 4. Functions
  • 4.1. Introduction to Functions
  • 4.2. Parameters
  • 4.3. Return values
  • 4.4. Modularizing Code with Functions
  • 4.5. Variable Scope
  • 4.6. (Optional) Recursion
  • 4.7. Exercises
• 5. Lists
  • 5.1. List Operations
  • 5.2. Assignment Statements Revisited: Multiple Assignment
  • 5.3. List Variables: References Versus Values
  • 5.4. Functions with Lists
  • 5.5. Using Several Lists to Store Related Data
  • 5.6. Coding Conventions for Lists Spanning Multiple Lines
  • 5.7. Lists of Lists
  • 5.8. (Optional) Functional Programming with Lists
  • 5.9. (Optional) List Comprehensions
  • 5.10. Exercises
• 6. Files and Exceptions
  • 6.1. Opening and Reading Files
  • 6.2. Reading File Records
  • 6.3. Writing Information to Files
  • 6.4. Exceptions
  • 6.5. Machine Representation (a.k.a. Bits, Bytes, and Nybbles)
  • 6.6. Exercises
• 7. Dictionaries
  • 7.1. Creating and using dictionaries
  • 7.2. Iterating through dictionaries
  • 7.3. Exercises
• 8. Searching and Sorting
  • 8.1. The Sorting Problem
  • 8.2. Towards an Algorithm for Sorting
  • 8.3. The Selection Sort
  • 8.4. Searching for Items in Sorted Data
  • 8.5. (Optional) Using Recursion to Search
  • 8.6. Exercises
• 9. Classes, Object-Orientation, and Pygame
  • 9.1. Getting Started
  • 9.2. Basic Pygame: Drawing Graffiti
  • 9.3. Animation, Part 1
  • 9.4. Animation, Part 2
  • 9.5. Objects and Classes
  • 9.6. Extending Classes to Make New Classes
  • 9.7. Pygame Sprites

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