Learn Python the hard way : a very simple introduction to the terrifyingly beautiful world of computers and code / Zed A. Shaw.

Includes index.

System requirements for accompanying DVD-ROM: media viewer capable of playing H.264 video files (such as VLC media player).

The hardway is easier -- Exercise 0: The setup -- Exercise 1: A good first program -- Exercise 2: Comments and pound characters -- Exercise 3: Numbers and math -- Exercise 4: Variables and names -- Exercise 5: More variables and printing -- Exercise 6: Strings and text -- Exercise 7: More printing -- Exercise 8: Printing, printing -- Exercise 9: Printing, printing, printing -- Exercise 10: What was that? -- Exercise 11: Asking questions -- Exercise 12: Prompting people -- Exercise 13: Parameters, unpacking, variables -- Exercise 14: Prompting and passing -- Exercise 15: Reading files -- Exercise 16: Reading andwriting files -- Exercise 17: More files -- Exercise 18: Names, variables, code, functions -- Exercise 19: Functions and variables -- Exercise 20: Functions and files -- Exercise 21: Functions can return something -- Exercise 22: What do you know so far? -- Exercise 23: Read some code -- Exercise 24: More practice -- Exercise 25: Even more practice -- Exercise 26: Congratulations, take a test! -- Exercise 27: Memorizing logic -- Exercise 28: Boolean practice -- Exercise 29: What if -- Exercise 30: Else and if -- Exercise 31: Making decisions -- Exercise 32: Loops and lists -- Exercise 33: While loops -- Exercise 34: Accessing elements of lists -- Exercise 35: Branches and functions -- Exercise 36: Designing and debugging -- Exercise 37: Symbol review -- Exercise 38: Doing things to lists -- Exercise 39: Dictionaries, oh lovely dictionaries -- Exercise 40: Modules, classes, and objects -- Exercise 41: Learning to speak object oriented -- Exercise 42: Is-a, has-a, objects, and classes -- Exercise 43: Basic object oriented analysis and design -- Exercise 44: Inheritance vs. composition -- Exercise 45: You make a game -- Exercise 46: A project skeleton -- Exercise 47: Automated testing -- Exercise 48: Advanced user input -- Exercise 49: Making sentences -- Exercise 50: Your first website -- Exercise 51: Getting input from a browser -- Exercise 52: The start of your Web game -- Next steps -- Advice from an old programmer -- Appendix A: Command line crash course.

Zed Shaw has perfected the worlds best system for learning Python. Follow it and you will succeed-just like the hundreds of thousands of beginners Zed has taught to date! You bring the discipline, commitment, and persistence; the author supplies everything else. In Learn Python the Hard Way Third Edition, you will learn Python by working through 52 brilliantly crafted exercises. Read them. Type their code precisely. No copying and pasting. Fix your mistakes. Watch the programs run. As you do you will learn how software works; what good programs look like; how to read, write, and think about code; and how to find and fix your mistakes using tricks professional programmers use. Publisher description.