that programming hasn' "clickedfor them they may be able to solve the practice exercises from their tutorials but still struggle to picture what complete program "looks like by first copying and then later re-creating the games in this bookthey'll be exposed to how the programming concepts they've learned are assembled into variety of real programs the people in the second group are those who are new to programming but are excited and bit adventurous they want to dive right in and get started making gamessimulationsand number-crunching programs right away they're fine with copying the code and learning along the way or perhaps they already know how to program in another language but are new to python while it' no substitute for complete introductory python coursethis book contains brief introduction to python basics and how to use the debugger to examine the inner workings of program as it runs experienced programmers might have fun with the programs in this book as wellbut keep in mind that this book was written for beginners about this book while the bulk of this book is dedicated to the featured programsthere are also extra resources with general programming and python information here' what' contained in this bookprojects the projects are too numerous to list herebut each one is self-contained mini-that includes the project' namea descriptiona sample run of the program' outputand the source code of the program there are also suggestions for experimental edits you can make to the code to customize the program appendix atag index lists all of the projects categorized by their project tags appendix bcharacter map list of character codes for symbols such as heartslinesarrowsand blocks that your programs can print how to learn from the programs in this book this book doesn' teach python or programming concepts like traditional tutorial it has learn-by-doing approachwhere you're encouraged to manually copy the programsplay with themand inspect their inner workings by running them under debugger the point of this book isn' to give detailed explanation of programming language syntaxbut to show solid examples of programs that perform an actual activitywhether it' card gamean animationor exploration of mathematical puzzle as suchi recommend the following steps download the program and run it to see what the program does for yourself introduction xvii