About the Python Beginner's Handbook

This "handbook" is a supplemental resource for anyone starting to learn Python programming. The topics covered herein are meant for:

• self-learners
• students (particularly those in a first-year college course for Python)
• those learning for fun or to make a career change
• anyone learning programming basics through Python version 3

To make the most of this handbook, readers should have access to a computer that has the Python interpreter installed on it, and they should have access to other learning materials, curriculum, or instructors to act as primary guides for their learning.

Hopefully this site will help you take the first bold steps along a very rewarding path!

Sections

The handbook is split into three sections:

• Concepts covers some of the major concepts that you will encounter in Python and in other programming languages: control structures, functions, input & output, data types, and sequence types.
• Instructions covers some common tasks that beginning students might be asked to complete: checking if a variable is within a certain range, defining functions, calling functions, writing for loops, and writing while loops.
• Quick Reference offers tables and lists for those moments when you need to quickly find information about things such as built-in functions, reserved words, operators, operator precedence, lists modication methods, formatting numbers, slicing sequences, and variable naming rules.

Topics not covered here

This site not an exhaustive guide to Python. It is merely a supplemental resource to use with other curriculum or learning materials.

Topics which are not covered (either in depth or at all) in this handbook include, but are not limited to:

• practice exercises
• installing the Python interpreter
• object-oriented programming
• exceptions
• error handling
• input validation
• classes
• inheritance
• recursion
• GUI
• sets
• modules
• data types that are not built-in
• reading/writing file data

Good luck!

Hopefully, this handbook will help you as you begin your journey into programming. Stick with it. There is a whole online community of programmers eager to exchange knowledge and skills with new programmers, and eager to see what new programmers have to contribute. Best of luck, and keep on learning!

Questions or suggestions? Open an issue on GitHub.