How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Interactive Edition
This interactive book is a product of the Runestone Interactive Project at Luther College, led by Brad Miller and David Ranum. There have been many contributors to the project. Our thanks especially to the following:
- This book is based on the Original work by: Jeffrey Elkner, Allen B. Downey, and Chris Meyers
- Activecode based on Skulpt
- Codelens based on Online Python Tutor
- Many contributions from the CSLearning4U research group at Georgia Tech.
- ACM-SIGCSE for the special projects grant that funded our student Isaac Dontje Lindell for the summer of 2013.
- NSF
The Runestone Interactive tools are open source and we encourage you to contact us, or grab a copy from GitHub if you would like to use them to write your own resources.
Table of ContentsΒΆ
- 1. General Introduction
- 1.1. The Way of the Program
- 1.2. Algorithms
- 1.3. The Python Programming Language
- 1.4. Executing Python in this Book
- 1.5. More About Programs
- 1.6. What is Debugging?
- 1.7. Syntax errors
- 1.8. Runtime Errors
- 1.9. Semantic Errors
- 1.10. Experimental Debugging
- 1.11. Formal and Natural Languages
- 1.12. A Typical First Program
- 1.13. Comments
- 1.14. Glossary
- 2. Simple Python Data
- 2.1. Variables, Expressions and Statements
- 2.2. Values and Data Types
- 2.3. Type conversion functions
- 2.4. Variables
- 2.5. Variable Names and Keywords
- 2.6. Statements and Expressions
- 2.7. Operators and Operands
- 2.8. Input
- 2.9. Order of Operations
- 2.10. Reassignment
- 2.11. Updating Variables
- 2.12. Glossary
- 2.13. Exercises
- 3. Debugging Interlude 1
- 4. Python Turtle Graphics
- 4.1. Hello Little Turtles!
- 4.2. Our First Turtle Program
- 4.3. Instances — A Herd of Turtles
- 4.4. The
forLoop - 4.5. Flow of Execution of the for Loop
- 4.6. Iteration Simplifies our Turtle Program
- 4.7. The range Function
- 4.8. A Few More turtle Methods and Observations
- 4.9. Summary of Turtle Methods
- 4.10. Glossary
- 4.11. Exercises
- 5. Python Modules
- 6. Functions
- 6.1. Functions
- 6.2. Functions that Return Values
- 6.3. Variables and Parameters are Local
- 6.4. The Accumulator Pattern
- 6.5. Functions can Call Other Functions
- 6.6. Flow of Execution Summary
- 6.7. Using a Main Function
- 6.8. Program Development
- 6.9. Composition
- 6.10. A Turtle Bar Chart
- 6.11. Glossary
- 6.12. Exercises
- 7. Selection
- 8. More About Iteration
- 8.1. Iteration Revisited
- 8.2. The
forloop revisited - 8.3. The
whileStatement - 8.4. Randomly Walking Turtles
- 8.5. The 3n + 1 Sequence
- 8.6. Newton’s Method
- 8.7. Algorithms Revisited
- 8.8. Simple Tables
- 8.9. 2-Dimensional Iteration: Image Processing
- 8.10. Image Processing on Your Own
- 8.11. Glossary
- 8.12. Exercises
- 9. Strings
- 9.1. Strings Revisited
- 9.2. A Collection Data Type
- 9.3. Operations on Strings
- 9.4. Index Operator: Working with the Characters of a String
- 9.5. String Methods
- 9.6. Length
- 9.7. The Slice Operator
- 9.8. String Comparison
- 9.9. Strings are Immutable
- 9.10. Traversal and the
forLoop: By Item - 9.11. Traversal and the
forLoop: By Index - 9.12. Traversal and the
whileLoop - 9.13. The
inandnot inoperators - 9.14. The Accumulator Pattern with Strings
- 9.15. Turtles and Strings and L-Systems
- 9.16. Looping and Counting
- 9.17. A
findfunction - 9.18. Optional parameters
- 9.19. Character classification
- 9.20. Summary
- 9.21. Glossary
- 9.22. Exercises
- 10. Lists
- 10.1. Lists
- 10.2. List Values
- 10.3. List Length
- 10.4. Accessing Elements
- 10.5. List Membership
- 10.6. Concatenation and Repetition
- 10.7. List Slices
- 10.8. Lists are Mutable
- 10.9. List Deletion
- 10.10. Objects and References
- 10.11. Aliasing
- 10.12. Cloning Lists
- 10.13. Repetition and References
- 10.14. List Methods
- 10.15. The Return of L-Systems
- 10.16. Append versus Concatenate
- 10.17. Lists and
forloops - 10.18. Using Lists as Parameters
- 10.19. Pure Functions
- 10.20. Which is Better?
- 10.21. Functions that Produce Lists
- 10.22. List Comprehensions
- 10.23. Nested Lists
- 10.24. Strings and Lists
- 10.25.
listType Conversion Function - 10.26. Tuples and Mutability
- 10.27. Tuple Assignment
- 10.28. Tuples as Return Values
- 10.29. Glossary
- 10.30. Exercises
- 11. Files
- 12. Dictionaries
- 13. Recursion
- 14. Classes and Objects - the Basics
- 14.1. Object-oriented programming
- 14.2. A change of perspective
- 14.3. Objects Revisited
- 14.4. User Defined Classes
- 14.5. Improving our Constructor
- 14.6. Adding Other Methods to our Class
- 14.7. Objects as Arguments and Parameters
- 14.8. Converting an Object to a String
- 14.9. Instances as Return Values
- 14.10. Glossary
- 14.11. Exercises
- 15. Classes and Objects - Digging a Little Deeper