December 2011
Beginner
508 pages
13h 42m
English
Content preview from Introduction to Computing Using Python: An Application Development FocusBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
CHAPTER 1
Introduction to Computer Science
1.3 Python Programming Language
IN THIS INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER, we provide the context for the book and introduce the key concepts and terminology that we will be using throughout. The starting point for our discussion are several questions. What is computer science? What do computer scientists and computer application developers do? And what tools do they use?
Computers, or more generally computer systems, form one set of tools. We discuss the different components of a computer system including the hardware, the operating system, the network and the Internet, and the programming language used to write programs. We specifically provide some background on the Python programming language, the language used in this book.
The other set of tools are the reasoning skills, grounded in logic and mathematics, required to develop a computer application. We introduce the idea of computational thinking and illustrate how it is used in the process of developing a small web search application.
The foundational concepts and terminology introduce in this chapter are independent of the Python programming language. They are relevant to any type of application development regardless of the hardware or software platform or programming language used.
1.1 Computer Science
This textbook is an introduction to programming. It is also an introduction to Python, the programming language. ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.