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 Contents¶
- 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
- 1.15. Exercises
- 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. 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. The
forLoop - 4.4. Flow of Execution of the for Loop
- 4.5. Iteration Simplifies our Turtle Program
- 4.6. The range Function
- 4.7. The Accumulator Pattern
- 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
- 7. Selection
- 7.1. Boolean Values and Boolean Expressions
- 7.2. Logical operators
- 7.3. Precedence of Operators
- 7.4. Conditional Execution: Binary Selection
- 7.5. Omitting the else Clause: Unary Selection
- 7.6. Nested conditionals
- 7.7. Chained conditionals
- 7.8. Boolean Functions
- 7.9. Assert Statements
- 7.10. Glossary
- 7.11. Exercises
- 8. More About Iteration
- 9. Strings
- 9.1. A Collection Data Type
- 9.2. Operations on Strings
- 9.3. Index Operator: Working with the Characters of a String
- 9.4. Length
- 9.5. String Comparison
- 9.6. Traversal and the
forLoop: By Index - 9.7. Strings are Immutable
- 9.8. The Accumulator Pattern with Strings
- 9.9. Characters
- 9.10. Summary
- 9.11. Glossary
- 9.12. Exercises
- 10. Lists
- 11. Classes and Objects
Appendices¶
Appendices
Acknowledgements¶
Acknowledgements
- Copyright Notice
- Preface to the Interactive Edition
- Whats the deal with Logging in?
- How to Contribute
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Preface to the Third Edition
- The Rhodes Local Edition (RLE)
- Preface to the First and Second Editions
- Contributor List
- GNU Free Documentation License
- ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents