Python Programming for Absolute Beginners

Most Python beginner books on the market are either too textbook-like or throw a list of syntax at you from the start. What makes this book valuable is that its instructional design really works like a course: the author, Ana Bell, is an MIT lecturer who teaches Introduction to Computer Science and Python Programming and has long worked with students who have no prior experience, so she knows exactly where beginners get stuck at the first step. The book is broken into 38 short lessons, each usually covering just one concept, so readers can immediately write a few lines of code to test what they have learned, keeping the learning burden small. More importantly, 7 comprehensive projects advance alongside the tutorial: after learning variables, readers build "hours to minutes"; after strings, a "name mashup"; after functions, "analyze your friends"; after dictionaries and lists, "document similarity"; and after object-oriented programming, a "card game." The projects are not decorations but the culmination of each part's knowledge, letting readers genuinely feel what they can do with what they have learned. The Chinese edition is a 16-format paperback with numerous illustrations, tip boxes, and end-of-lesson exercises; the appendices include full exercise answers and a Python quick reference, so self-learners need not worry about having no one to answer their questions. If you have never programmed before and want a book that is not anxiety-inducing and that you can follow step by step to the end, this one is very suitable.