Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science
Dr. John Zelle’s book Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science is a fun and thoughtful introduction to computer science, using Python as the vehicle of example and experiment. Thus two useful skills are engendered together, without becoming overly mired in the possible complexities of either. It is simply an introduction, and would serve well as part of a series of texts in approaching Python and computer science. Regardless, it is enjoyable and quick to read thus far, leaving what I feel will be a more solid foundation for further study.
As I continue to go through the book, I am completing most of the exercises listed in and at the end of the chapters. As I do, I also add them to one of my svn repositories. You can view and download them here. Some are slightly altered from the book’s intent and form, but are along the same lines. Even if you aren’t going through the exercises yourself, perhaps you might enjoy calculating the distance to a lightning strike based on the time it took for the thunder to arrive, or perhaps you’d like to approximate the value of pi using Newton’s method. See if you remember how before checking the scripts though.
Possibly Related (no promises):
- Printing tabular data attractively in Python
- A better way to search for methods of Python objects
- Running MySQL queries in Python
- PyCon 2009: Thoughts and observations
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March 1, 2009 - 9:41 PM
