Foundations of Python Programming

This interactive book is a product of the Runestone Interactive Project.

This book is based on the Original work by: Jeffrey Elkner, Allen B. Downey, and Chris Meyers, the Interactive edition of How to Think Like a Computer Scientist by Brad Miller, David Ranum and many more and Programs Information and People by Paul Resnick
Activecode based on Skulpt
Codelens based on Online Python Tutor
Many contributions from the CSLearning4U research group at Georgia Tech.
ACM-SIGCSE for the special projects grant that funded our student Isaac Dontje Lindell for the summer of 2013.
NSF

The Runestone Interactive tools are open source and we encourage you to contact us, or grab a copy from GitHub if you would like to use them to write your own resources.

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Table of Contents¶

Assignments

Preface

1. General Introduction
- 1.1. Introduction: The Way of the Program
  - 1.1.1. Learning Goals
  - 1.1.2. Objectives
- 1.2. Algorithms
- 1.3. The Python Programming Language
- 1.4. Special Ways to Execute Python in this Book
- 1.5. More About Programs
  - 1.5.1. Preview of Control Structures
- 1.6. Formal and Natural Languages
- 1.7. A Typical First Program
- 1.8. 👩‍💻 Predict Before You Run!
- 1.9. 👩‍💻 To Understand a Program, Change It!
- 1.10. Comments
- 1.11. Glossary
- 1.12. Chapter Assessment
- 1.13. 🤔 A Preview of the End Goal
  - 1.13.1. Image Processing Functions
- 1.14. 🤔 Driving the Turtle
2. Variables, Statements, and Expressions
- 2.1. Introduction
  - 2.1.1. Learning Goals
  - 2.1.2. Objectives
- 2.2. Values and Data Types
- 2.3. Operators and Operands
- 2.4. Function Calls
  - 2.4.1. Function calls as part of complex expressions
  - 2.4.2. Functions are objects; parentheses invoke functions
- 2.5. Data Types
- 2.6. Type conversion functions
- 2.7. Variables
- 2.8. Variable Names and Keywords
- 2.9. 👩‍💻 Choosing the Right Variable Name
- 2.10. Statements and Expressions
- 2.11. Order of Operations
- 2.12. Reassignment
  - 2.12.1. Developing your mental model of How Python Evaluates
- 2.13. Updating Variables
- 2.14. 👩‍💻 Hard-Coding
- 2.15. Input
- 2.16. Glossary
- 2.17. Exercises
- 2.18. Chapter Assessment
- 2.19. 🤔 Input Compute Output
  - 2.19.1. How Many Trees?
  - 2.19.2. How Many Handshakes?
3. Debugging
- 3.1. Introduction to Debugging
  - 3.1.1. Learning Goals
  - 3.1.2. Objectives
- 3.2. 👩‍💻 Programming in the Real World
- 3.3. 👩‍💻 Debugging
  - 3.3.1. How to Avoid Debugging
- 3.4. 👩‍💻 Beginning tips for Debugging
- 3.5. Syntax errors
- 3.6. Runtime Errors
- 3.7. Semantic Errors
- 3.8. 👩‍💻 Know Your Error Messages
4. Python Modules
- 4.1. Introduction to Python Modules
  - 4.1.1. Learning Goals
  - 4.1.2. Objectives
- 4.2. Modules
  - 4.2.1. Importing Modules
  - 4.2.2. Syntax for Importing Modules and Functionality
- 4.3. The random module
- 4.4. Glossary
- 4.5. Exercises
5. Python Turtle
- 5.1. Hello Little Turtles!
  - 5.1.1. Learning Goals
  - 5.1.2. Objectives
- 5.2. Our First Turtle Program
- 5.3. Instances: A Herd of Turtles
- 5.4. Object Oriented Concepts
- 5.5. Repetition with a For Loop
- 5.6. A Few More turtle Methods and Observations
- 5.7. Summary of Turtle Methods
- 5.8. 👩‍💻 Incremental Programming
- 5.9. 👩‍💻 Common turtle Errors
- 5.10. Exercises
- 5.11. Chapter Assessment - Turtle and Object Mechanics
- 5.12. Chapter Assessment - Drawing with Turtle
- 5.13. 🤔 Drawing a Circle with the Turtle
6. Sequences
- 6.1. Introduction: Sequences
  - 6.1.1. Learning Goals
  - 6.1.2. Objectives
- 6.2. Strings and Lists
- 6.3. Index Operator: Working with the Characters of a String
  - 6.3.1. Index Operator: Accessing Elements of a List or Tuple
- 6.4. Disabmiguating []: creation vs indexing
- 6.5. Length
- 6.6. The Slice Operator
  - 6.6.1. List Slices
  - 6.6.2. Tuple Slices
- 6.7. Concatenation and Repetition
- 6.8. Count and Index
  - 6.8.1. Count
  - 6.8.2. Index
- 6.9. Splitting and Joining Strings
- 6.10. Exercises
- 6.11. Chapter Assessment
- 6.12. 🤔 Generating a Password XKCD Style
7. Iteration
- 7.1. Introduction: Iteration
- 7.2. The for Loop
- 7.3. Flow of Execution of the for Loop
- 7.4. Strings and for loops
- 7.5. Lists and for loops
  - 7.5.1. Iteration Simplifies our Turtle Program
- 7.6. The Accumulator Pattern
- 7.7. Traversal and the for Loop: By Index
- 7.8. Nested Iteration: Image Processing
- 7.9. 👩‍💻 Printing Intermediate Results
- 7.10. 👩‍💻 Naming Variables in For Loops
- 7.11. The Gory Details: Iterables
- 7.12. 👩‍💻 Keeping Track of Your Iterator Variable and Your Iterable
- 7.13. Glossary
- 7.14. Exercises
- 7.15. Chapter Assessment
- 7.16. 🤔 Computing Statistics with Kiva Data
  - 7.16.1. Level 1 Questions
  - 7.16.2. Level 2 Questions
8. Conditionals
- 8.1. Intro: What we can do with Turtles and Conditionals
  - 8.1.1. Learning Goals
  - 8.1.2. Objectives
- 8.2. Boolean Values and Boolean Expressions
- 8.3. Logical operators
- 8.4. The in and not in operators
- 8.5. Precedence of Operators
- 8.6. Conditional Execution: Binary Selection
- 8.7. Omitting the else Clause: Unary Selection
- 8.8. Nested conditionals
- 8.9. Chained conditionals
- 8.10. The Accumulator Pattern with Conditionals
  - 8.10.1. Accumulating the Max Value
- 8.11. 👩‍💻 Setting Up Conditionals
  - 8.11.1. Choosing your type of Conditional
- 8.12. Glossary
- 8.13. Exercises
- 8.14. Chapter Assessment
- 8.15. 🤔 Graphing Kiva Data with the Turtle
- 8.16. 🤔 Graphing Kiva Data with Altair
9. Transforming Sequences
- 9.1. Introduction: Transforming Sequences
  - 9.1.1. Learning Goals
  - 9.1.2. Objectives
- 9.2. Mutability
- 9.3. List Element Deletion
- 9.4. Objects and References
- 9.5. Aliasing
- 9.6. Cloning Lists
- 9.7. Mutating Methods
  - 9.7.1. List Methods
- 9.8. Append versus Concatenate
- 9.9. Non-mutating Methods on Strings
  - 9.9.1. String Format Method
- 9.10. The Accumulator Pattern with Lists
- 9.11. The Accumulator Pattern with Strings
- 9.12. 👩‍💻 Accumulator Pattern Strategies
- 9.13. 👩‍💻 Don’t Mutate A List That You Are Iterating Through
- 9.14. Summary
- 9.15. Exercises
- 9.16. Chapter Assessment - List Methods
- 9.17. 🤔 Substitution Cipher
- 9.18. 🤔 Image Processing
10. Files
- 10.1. Introduction: Working with Data Files
  - 10.1.1. Learning Goals
  - 10.1.2. Objectives
- 10.2. Reading a File
- 10.3. Alternative File Reading Methods
- 10.4. Iterating over lines in a file
- 10.5. Finding a File in your Filesystem
- 10.6. Using with for Files
- 10.7. Recipe for Reading and Processing a File
- 10.8. Writing Text Files
- 10.9. CSV Format
- 10.10. Reading in data from a CSV File
- 10.11. Writing data to a CSV File
- 10.12. 👩‍💻 Tips on Handling Files
- 10.13. Glossary
- 10.14. Exercises
- 10.15. Chapter Assessment
- 10.16. 🤔 Exploring Common Words and SETI
  - 10.16.1. Reading the data
  - 10.16.2. More Fun with words
- 10.17. 🤔 Monte Carlo Simulations
11. Dictionaries
- 11.1. Introduction: Dictionaries
  - 11.1.1. Learning Goals
  - 11.1.2. Objectives
- 11.2. Introduction: Dictionaries
- 11.3. Dictionary operations
- 11.4. Dictionary methods
- 11.5. Aliasing and copying
- 11.6. Introduction: Accumulating Multiple Results In a Dictionary
- 11.7. Accumulating Results From a Dictionary
- 11.8. Accumulating the Best Key
- 11.9. 👩‍💻 When to use a dictionary
- 11.10. Glossary
- 11.11. Exercises
- 11.12. Chapter Assessment
  - 11.12.1. Assessment - Dictionaries
  - 11.12.2. Assessment - Dictionary Accumulation
- 11.13. 🤔 Converting Roman Numerals
  - 11.13.1. Converting Roman to Arabic
  - 11.13.2. Converting Arabic To Roman
- 11.14. 🤔 Stack Overflow Developer Survey
12. Functions
- 12.1. Introduction to Functions
  - 12.1.1. Topics
  - 12.1.2. Learning Objectives
- 12.2. Function Definition
- 12.3. Function Invocation
- 12.4. Function Parameters
- 12.5. Returning a value from a function
- 12.6. 👩‍💻 Decoding a Function
- 12.7. A function that accumulates
- 12.8. Variables and parameters are local
- 12.9. Global Variables
- 12.10. Functions can call other functions (Composition)
- 12.11. Flow of Execution Summary
- 12.12. 👩‍💻 Print vs. return
- 12.13. Passing Mutable Objects
- 12.14. Side Effects
- 12.15. Glossary
- 12.16. Exercises
- 12.17. Chapter Assessment
- 12.18. 🤔 Turtles and Strings and L-Systems
  - 12.18.1. L-Systems and Lists
- 12.19. 🤔 Image Processing Revisited
- 12.20. 🤔 Predicting Pizza Prices - Linear Regression
- 12.21. 🤔 Build your own Google
13. Tuple Packing and Unpacking
- 13.1. Introduction
  - 13.1.1. Learning Objectives
- 13.2. Tuple Packing
- 13.3. Tuples as Return Values
- 13.4. Tuple Assignment with unpacking
- 13.5. Unpacking Into Iterator Variables
- 13.6. Glossary
- 13.7. Exercises
- 13.8. Chapter Assessment
14. More About Iteration
- 14.1. Introduction
  - 14.1.1. Learning Goals
  - 14.1.2. Objectives
- 14.2. The while Statement
- 14.3. The Listener Loop
  - 14.3.1. Other uses of while
    - 14.3.1.1. Sentinel Values
    - 14.3.1.2. Validating Input
- 14.4. Randomly Walking Turtles
- 14.5. Break and Continue
- 14.6. 👩‍💻 Infinite Loops
- 14.7. Exercises
- 14.8. Chapter Assessment
15. Advanced Functions
- 15.1. Introduction: Optional Parameters
- 15.2. Keyword Parameters
  - 15.2.1. Keyword Parameters with .format
- 15.3. Anonymous functions with lambda expressions
- 15.4. 👩‍💻 Programming With Style
- 15.5. Method Invocations
- 15.6. Exercises
- 15.7. Chapter Assessment
16. Sorting
- 16.1. Introduction: Sorting with Sort and Sorted
- 16.2. Optional reverse parameter
- 16.3. Optional key parameter
- 16.4. Sorting a Dictionary
- 16.5. Breaking Ties: Second Sorting
- 16.6. 👩‍💻 When to use a Lambda Expression
- 16.7. Glossary
- 16.8. Exercises
- 16.9. Chapter Assessment
17. Nested Data and Nested Iteration
- 17.1. Introduction: Nested Data and Nested Iteration
  - 17.1.1. Lists with Complex Items
- 17.2. Nested Dictionaries
- 17.3. Processing JSON results
- 17.4. Nested Iteration
- 17.5. 👩‍💻 Structuring Nested Data
- 17.6. Deep and Shallow Copies
- 17.7. 👩‍💻 Extracting from Nested Data
- 17.8. Exercises
- 17.9. Chapter Assessment
18. Test Cases
- 18.1. Introduction: Test Cases
- 18.2. Writing Test Cases for Functions
- 18.3. 👩‍💻 Program Development
- 18.4. Glossary
19. Exceptions
- 19.1. What is an exception?
- 19.2. Exception Handling Flow-of-control
  - 19.2.1. Raising and Catching Errors
- 19.3. 👩‍💻 When to use try/except
- 19.4. Standard Exceptions
- 19.5. Exercises
- 19.6. Chapter Assessment
20. Defining your own Classes
- 20.1. Introduction: Classes and Objects - the Basics
  - 20.1.1. Object-oriented programming
- 20.2. Objects Revisited
- 20.3. User Defined Classes
- 20.4. Adding Parameters to the Constructor
- 20.5. Adding Other Methods to a Class
- 20.6. Objects as Arguments and Parameters
- 20.7. Converting an Object to a String
- 20.8. Instances as Return Values
- 20.9. Sorting Lists of Instances
- 20.10. Class Variables and Instance Variables
- 20.11. Thinking About Classes and Instances
- 20.12. Testing classes
- 20.13. A Tamagotchi Game
- 20.14. Glossary
- 20.15. Exercises
- 20.16. Chapter Assessment
21. Building Programs
- 21.1. Building A Program: A Strategy
- 21.2. 👩‍💻 Sketch an Outline
- 21.3. 👩‍💻 Code one section at a time
- 21.4. 👩‍💻 Clean Up
22. Inheritance
- 22.1. Introduction: Class Inheritance
- 22.2. Inheriting Variables and Methods
  - 22.2.1. Mechanics of Defining a Subclass
  - 22.2.2. How the interpreter looks up attributes
- 22.3. Overriding Methods
- 22.4. Invoking the Parent Class’s Method
- 22.5. Tamagotchi Revisited
- 22.6. Exercises
- 22.7. Chapter Assessment
23. More on Accumulation: Map, Filter, List Comprehension, and Zip
- 23.1. Introduction: Map, Filter, List Comprehensions, and Zip
- 23.2. Map
- 23.3. Filter
- 23.4. List Comprehensions
- 23.5. Zip
- 23.6. Exercises
- 23.7. Chapter Assessment

Appendices¶

Acknowledgements¶

Acknowledgements

Copyright Notice
Foreword
Contributor List
GNU Free Documentation License
ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents

Index and Search¶

Index
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