Conceptual Programming with Python

Overview of the book

We start with an exploration of Python from the top-level (Chapter 2), which covers some basic concepts like data types, coercions, functions and so on. We also introduce a graphical view of data structures in Python. Next we look at imperative programming (Chapter 3) which is the traditional way of programming present in Fortran or C. We introduce basic control structures like if-then-else and loops. We also discuss Turing's famous Halting problem. After this, we introduce one of the most powerful spells the young software wizard should master: recursion (Chapter 4), that is a function that calls itself. We are also using this to implement a sudoku solver via backtracking. Obviously, we cover Object Oriented Programming (Chapter 5) which is now a standard approach to program development. We also explain the use of trees to represent expressions and knowledge bases. An alternative to Object Oriented Programming is Functional Programming (Chapter 6), which is close to a mathematical understanding of programming. We also cover infinite data structures and how to write a Python interpreter in a functional style. Now you need to develop a bigger program, ideally in a group, and we suggest to write a game because it is fun and it is easy to understand what the goal is, hence we introduce the pygame library (Chapter 7). Finally, we give an introduction to Data Science which underlies the modern approach to Machine Learning (Chapter 8).

We present some challenges during the text, which you should try to solve yourself, but our solution is provided at the end of the chapter. Each chapter finishes with a quiz and exercises. The quiz can be easily done by using the Python interpreter but the point is to see whether you understand the language well enough to execute programs in your head. Indeed, the ability to run programs in your head is essential if you want to be able to write programs. The exercises are of different degrees of difficulty.

Content

Videos

We are making some videos associated to the different chapters of our book. These are available on the Computerphile channel.

Feedback

From Lulu

"Excellent book! Highly recommended. This is the main textbook of a module I'm currently teaching." By Ahmed Kheiri, Lecturer in Management Science at Lancaster University (United Kingdom), 14-Jan-2020

"I really enjoyed reading this book. With its colloquial style, it is easy to follow and a pleasure to read. I can imagine that it is well suited for early programmers and definitely has some insights even for seasoned coders. Examples and problems presented are interesting and refreshing - you want to try them out. After all, who does not want to impress their elders by having their Python code solve the most difficult Sudoku? At first, I was surprised not to find all code on Github. However, just as the authors say that reading code is important, I think writing code, even if it is copying out of this book, is a useful next step. Off to finish my Pygame Pong implementation!" By Yves 29-Dec-2019

This book is very informative and at a level of everybody. It is touched the most important concepts of programming. Moreover, it has challenging exercises to help you cemented a concept learnt on each chapter. It is easy to follow even for a person with no background in programming. It is well written and go to straight to the point. You don’t waste time with a lot of literature which don’t matter to the learning. I will highly recommend this book to anybody who wants to learn concepts of programming, not just programming syntax. By RAOUL NIYO 28-Dec-2019

Instructors

Course instructors can request an inspection copy of the book, together with a large collection of introductory and advanced exams and answers based on the content.

Errata

All known issues are reported on our bitbucket issue tracking system. Please use this system if you spot any further issues.