introduction the book' aim is to teach the python languageand although many of the standard python libraries are usednot all of them are this is not problembecause once you have read the bookyou will have enough python knowledge to be able to make use of any of the standard librariesor any third-party python libraryand be able to create library modules of your own the book is designed to be useful to several different audiencesincluding selftaught and hobbyist programmersstudentsscientistsengineersand others who need to program as part of their workand of coursecomputing professionals and computer scientists to be of use to such wide range of people without boring the knowledgeable or losing the less-experiencedthe book assumes at least some programming experience (in any languagein particularit assumes basic knowledge of data types (such as numbers and strings)collection data types (such as sets and lists)control structures (such as if and while statements)and functions in additionsome examples and exercises assume basic knowledge of html markupand some of the more specialized at the end assume basic knowledge of their subject areafor examplethe databases assumes basic knowledge of sql the book is structured in such way as to make you as productive as possible as quickly as possible by the end of the first you will be able to write small but useful python programs each successive introduces new topicsand often both broadens and deepens the coverage of topics introduced in earlier this means that if you read the in sequenceyou can stop at any point and you'll be able to write complete programs with what you have learned up to that pointand thenof courseresume reading to learn more advanced and sophisticated techniques when you are ready for this reasonsome topics are introduced in one and then are explored further in one or more later two key problems arise when teaching new programming language the first is that sometimes when it is necessary to teach one particular conceptthat concept depends on another conceptwhich in turn depends either directly or indirectly on the first the second is thatat the beginningthe reader may know little or nothing of the languageso it is very difficult to present interesting or useful examples and exercises in this bookwe seek to solve both of these problemsfirst by assuming some prior programming experienceand second by presenting python' "beautiful heartin --eight key pieces of python that are sufficient on their own to write decent programs one consequence of this approach is that in the early some of the examples are bit artificial in stylesince they use only what has been taught up to the point where they are presentedthis effect diminishes by until by the end of all the examples are written in completely natural and idiomatic python style the book' approach is wholly practicaland you are encouraged to try out the examples and exercises for yourself to get hands-on experience wherever