Conceptual Programming with Python

by Thorsten Altenkirch, Isaac Triguero

Thorsten and Isaac have written this book based on a programming course we teach for Master's Students at the School of Computer Science of the University of Nottingham. The book is intended for students with little or no background in programming coming from different backgrounds educationally as well as culturally. It is not mainly a Python course but we use Python as a vehicle to teach basic programming concepts. Hence, the words conceptual programming in the title. We cover basic concepts about data structures, imperative programming, recursion and backtracking, object-oriented programming, functional programming, game development and some basics of data science.

Genres: Programming

260 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2019

Reviews

[Arthur Ryman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I decided to buy this book after watching a Computerphile YouTube video by Thorsten Altenkirch where he showed a very short recursive Python program to solve Sudoku. I was very impressed by its elegance. I also watched one where he discussed the Halting Problem. The videos didn't actually mention the book, but one did show it sitting on his desk. The book contains the Sudoku and Halting Problem examples, as well as several others. The book is very informal and easy to read. I appreciated the brevity of the code examples. They show off the power and simplicity of Python very well. I'd recommend this book to anyone who is learning programming with Python, or programming in general.

[Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plenty of solid content, with engaging projects. Evidently battle-tested on Masters students at the University of Nottingham, and largely generated from Jupyter notebooks - in fact, in a couple of instances it used the term notebook rather than book. Could have done with a thorough proof-read, but nonetheless I found some of the explanations did improve my patchy hobbyist understanding: the sections on recursion, OOP, and functional programming were those I found most helpful. I need to really give the backtracking section another going over, because I felt it had plenty to offer but I've not quite cracked it.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Neat little book. Picked up after watching the Computerphile YouTube channel. A lot of the material from the videos is repeated in more detail in the book. Especially enjoyed the chapter on OOP.