Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional (3rd Edition)

This is a classic introductory text for Python beginners; the English original is the 3rd edition of Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional, fully updated for Python 3. The book starts with installing Python and using the interactive interpreter, first introducing basic concepts such as numbers, expressions, variables, statements, functions, and modules, then moving on to lists and tuples, strings, dictionaries, conditionals and loops, abstraction, exceptions, magic methods, properties, and iterators, helping readers build a fairly complete foundation in syntax and methodology. The middle section expands into practical techniques: file handling, graphical user interfaces, database support, network programming, Python and the Web, the basics of testing, extending Python with C, and packaging and distributing programs. The latter half is organized around ten progressively more challenging hands-on projects, including automatic tagging, drawing charts, XML processing, news aggregation, a virtual tea party, remote editing with CGI, a bulletin board, file sharing with XML-RPC, file sharing with a GUI, and a homemade arcade game, demonstrating the full development process from requirements analysis to implementation, debugging, and deployment. The author, an associate professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, has long taught algorithms and is an avid Python educator; the book is clearly structured with abundant examples, suitable both as a self-study text for absolute beginners and as a systematic way for experienced programmers to fill gaps in their Python knowledge.