Book on Introduction to Programming with Python is Now Available for Sale
There’s nothing like a cold and snowy night to get the blog up-to-date!
My programming book was published by Editora Novatec and is now available for sale.
I created a page about the book, with links to bookstores and contact emails:
The book was written in such a way as to introduce new concepts gradually, with examples and exercises. When I started teaching, I taught Basic and Pascal. With Basic, there was the problem of line numbers. With Pascal, semicolons… it was too much to write before starting to program. In these cases, using a clear and simple pseudo-code, free from excessive symbols was interesting.
I avoided using pseudo-code or flowcharts, as I believe that when learning to program, it’s best to get straight to the point. With the Python language, everything becomes much simpler. Writing in pseudo-code can even be more complicated than writing in Python!
The reader/student needs to see something happening to continue studying. The important thing is to know how to read the program and understand what will happen when the program is executed. I really believe that the student should know if the program is correct before executing it. Execution is only a confirmation. A section on tracking was included in the book, to preserve this important step in learning programming.
Clarity and simplicity of language are really very important to facilitate learning. Python makes programming accessible not just for computer science and engineering students, but also for students from other areas.
Another characteristic of Python is that it allows us to use almost everything we have on the computer. Once you learn to program in Python, you can continue studying other programming languages or move directly to web applications, games, databases, etc. The path is smoother and without interruptions. It’s not just an introductory language, but also for everyday use.
Writing a book was something I always wanted to do. It takes a lot of work, you have to read, re-read, re-write and correct countless times. The revision process is really incredible, especially with the new orthography and the challenges of writing a technical book for beginners. Having an editor helps a lot in this task, as we alone would start to miss errors. I say we because my wife helped with the review.
Book Title: Introduction to Programming with Python
Author: Nilo Ney Coutinho Menezes
ISBN: 978-85-7522-250-8
Pages: 224
Publisher: Novatec
Year: 2010
Book Review:
This book is oriented towards beginners in programming. The basic concepts of programming, such as expressions, variables, repetitions, decisions, lists, functions and files, are presented one by one with examples and exercises. The work aims to explore computer programming as a tool for everyday use. It can be read during an introduction to computer programming course and used as a study guide for self-taught students. To fully appreciate the content, basic knowledge of computing, such as typing text, opening and saving files, is sufficient. All software used in the book can be downloaded free of charge and run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
Although the Python language (version 3.x) is very powerful and full of modern programming resources, this book does not aim to teach the language itself, but to teach how to program. Some resources of the language were not used to privilege exercises of programming logic and offer a broader preparation for the reader to other languages. This choice did not prevent the presentation of powerful resources of the language, although the book is not fundamentally a reference work.