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Murach’s Python Programming
by Michael Urban and Joel Murach
18 chapters, 576 pages, 223 illustrations
Published December 2016
ISBN 978-1-890774-97-4
18 chapters, 576 pages, 223 illustrations
Published December 2016
ISBN 978-1-890774-97-4
List price: $57.50
Because of its simple syntax, full set of features, and wide range of applications, Python is an ideal language for a first programming course. And our book takes advantage of the Python syntax and features to help beginners learn how to program faster and better than ever. Along the way, they’ll master the skills that are common to all programming languages so that learning the next language, like Java or C#, will be much easier. And at the end, they’ll have the basic Python skills that are in such demand today for applications ranging from web and game development to data analysis, scientific computing, artificial intelligence…and more!
Latest Edition
Python Programming (2nd Edition)
Published April 2021
This is by far the best Python tutorial I have come across. Tried Udemy, Udacity, some other video and printed tutorials, but didn’t get the feel of it. Murach's side-by-side lecture & example really works for me. And the sample codes and exercises are valuable tutorials that any newbie will want to keep as reference materials. Really effective training style.”
- About this Book
- Table of Contents
- Courseware
- FAQs
- Corrections
Book description
To present the Python skills in a manageable progression and at the right pace, this book is divided into four sections.
Section 1: Get your students off to a great start
- Section 1 presents an 8-chapter course in Python programming that gets your students off to a great start. In fact, by the end of chapter 2, they’ll have developed their first Python programs…programs that get input, process it, and display output…which is so much more motivating (and fun!) than writing a few lines of “Hello World” code that don’t have any practical application. This section is especially designed for beginners, but you can adapt the pace if your students have already taken an introductory programming course.
- By the time your students finish chapter 4, they’ll be able to develop, test, and debug Python programs that are built entirely of modules and functions. They’ll also be able to use pseudocode to plan their control structures and programs, and to use hierarchy charts to plan the functions of their programs. Then, in chapter 5, they’ll learn advanced techniques for testing and debugging their programs, including the best Python techniques.
- In chapters 6, 7, and 8, your students will learn how to use lists and tuples, how to use files for persistent data storage, and how to handle exceptions. This completes a section that by itself is an excellent first course in programming, and this will put your students far ahead of what they can accomplish with competing books.
Section 2: More essential concepts and skills
- The first four chapters in section 2 present other Python skills that every programmer should have. That includes how to work with numbers, strings, dates and times, and dictionaries. Then, the last chapter in this section presents algorithms and recursion.
- This book is designed so you can skip from section 1 to either section 2 or section 3. In addition, all of the chapters in section 2 are independent so you can assign them in whatever sequence you prefer, and you don’t have to assign all of them. This makes it easy for you to adapt this book to the time constraints and requirements of your course.
Section 3: Object-oriented programming
- The three chapters in section 3 present object-oriented programming: the OOP essentials, when and how to use inheritance, and how to design an OO program. These essential concepts are the same in all modern-day programming languages, so once your students master them…which is easier to do in Python using our approach…they’ll be able to apply them in any other language they use.
- Depending on the emphasis of your course, you can skip to this section right after you complete section 1. Then, you can return later to the chapters in section 2.
Section 4: Database and GUI programming
- The two chapters in section 4 are solid introductions to database programming and GUI programming. This brings all of the skills of sections 1 and 3 into the context of real-world programming. For instance, the last database program in chapter 17 is a 3-tier, shopping cart program, complete with modules, classes, and functions.
What courses this book can be used for
A first programing course
- This book is specifically designed for a first programming course. In fact, we recommend Python as a first programming language because of its simple syntax and full feature set. Once your students learn Python, they’ll be well prepared to learn a second language like Java, C++, or C#. They’ll also be ready to use their Python skills to go on to courses in web development, games programming, or scientific computing.
A second language course
- If you offer a Python course apart from your introductory programming course, this book will work for that too. It’s designed so you can move more quickly through the chapters in that case, skimming over familiar material and concentrating on the Python specifics or on concepts that your students are struggling with. In fact, if your students have used a book from another publisher for their first language course, our book will help you clarify any concepts they’re confused about, as you teach Python.
Why your students will learn faster and better with our book
We’re familiar with the competing Python books, and we’ve specifically designed this book to help your students learn faster and better than they can with any of them. Here are a few of the ways it does that:
- There are two ways to simplify material: Avoid all complications (which is what too many books do) or present the material in the right order, at the right pace. We don’t think the no-complications approach gives students a true view of what programming is all about. So we present each piece slowly and methodically in section 1, building up skills and confidence, and then pick up the pace once the foundation is in place.
- All the material is in our distinctive paired-pages format, where each topic is presented in a two-page spread: the examples and reference material are on the righthand page with additional explanation and perspective on the left. In today’s fast-paced world full of eager students who want to read less, do more, and pick up information on demand, it’s the ideal format. Students love it!
- Besides fitting students’ learning style, the paired-pages format also helps your students do their assignments and prepare for tests by making it easy for them to review what they’ve learned and to refresh their memories on how to apply their new skills.
- This book presents 45 complete programs. In each chapter, the programs start simply to illustrate the new concepts and skills, but then show the new skills in the context of real-world programming. We have long felt that these programs are essential to effective learning, and no other publisher does this the way we do. Yes, other books present complete programs too, but when the programs are trivial, they limit what the students can be expected to learn.
What software your students need for this book
- Python can be downloaded for free, and it includes an integrated development environment called IDLE. So it’s easy for students to set up their own systems for this course. To help with that, appendixes A and B provide the procedures that are needed for Windows and Mac OS X systems.
- For chapter 17 on database programming, your students will also have to install DB Browser for SQLite. Here again, the appendixes provide the procedures for doing that.
What people say about this book
“I've been a fan of Murach's approach to teaching programming concepts and practices for many years. Now they've finally published a book on Python, and they've done a wonderful job. The book explores a wide breadth of topics to get you competent in the language and the conventions used by the Python community. It largely sticks to examples of building Python programs for the console, which shows how easy it is to get up and running. A valuable resource for coders of all levels.”
- Jason Salas, Developer
“Best programming book on Python. You'll learn to love Murach's books. I learned Python and now I'm learning Java. I bought Murach's Java book even though we're using another one for class.”
- Posted online by student
“I just received your Python programming book which is just great - like all of your books are, to be honest. I'm glad it finally found its place in your library.”
- Luka Kolonic, IT Professional, Slovenia
“I found this to be a fantastic book for taking folk with no Python knowledge to a good firm grasp to develop their own projects, as well as folk with some knowledge who want to shore up the gaps.
“Each chapter does a really great job succinctly explaining the concept, why you would use it, has relevant code, and great summary/exercises to reinforce the area. The code is clean, well formatted, and uses great naming conventions. The projects and examples are spot on.
“As a moderate Python user, I definitely learned a few new tricks, and reduced some complexity in my code. I have no qualms recommending this book for folk looking to pick up Python and use it!”
- Jeremy Johnson, Dream in Code
“Murach isn't a publisher I was familiar with so I was surprised when I started reading its Python Programming book and found it to be of such high quality. I feel like it covered the topics well and included some items that you don't always see in introductory Python books, such as the CSV, database and GUI examples…. The text is clear and the examples are interesting. I really like that you get to write mini-programs in almost all of the chapters and they almost always do something besides just printing out a string.
“I believe this is a worthy book for someone who wants to learn Python.”
- Mike Driscoll, Programmer, Mouse vs Python blog
View the table of contents for this book in a PDF: Table of Contents (PDF)
Click on any chapter title to display or hide its content.
Section 1 Essential concepts and skills
Chapter 1 An introduction to Python programming
Introduction to Python
Why Python works so well as your first programming language
Three types of Python applications
The source code for a console application
How Python compiles and runs source code
How disk storage and main memory work together
How to use IDLE to develop programs
How to use the interactive shell
How to work with source files
How to compile and run a program
How to fix syntax and runtime errors
Chapter 2 How to write your first programs
Basic coding skills
How to code statements
How to code comments
How to use functions
How to work with data types and variables
How to assign values to variables
How to name variables
How to work with numeric data
How to code arithmetic expressions
How to use arithmetic expressions in assignment statements
How to use the interactive shell for testing numeric operations
How to work with string data
How to assign strings to variables
How to join strings
How to include special characters in strings
How to use the interactive shell for testing string operations
How to use five of the Python functions
How to use the print() function
How to use the input() function
How to use the int(), float(), and round() functions
How to chain functions
Two illustrative programs
The Miles Per Gallon program
The Test Scores program
Chapter 3 How to code control statements
How to code Boolean expressions
How to use the relational operators
How to use the logical operators
How to compare strings
How to code the selection structure
How to code if statements
More examples of if statements
How to code nested if statements
How to use pseudocode to plan if statements
Two illustrative programs
The Miles Per Gallon program
The Invoice program
How to use the iteration structure
How to code while statements
How to code for statements
How to code break and continue statements
More examples of loops
How to use pseudocode to plan a program
Two illustrative programs
The Test Scores program
The Future Value program
Chapter 4 How to define and use functions and modules
How to define and use functions
How to define and call a function
How to define and call a main() function
The Future Value program with functions
More skills for defining and using functions
How to use default values for arguments
How to use named arguments
When and how to use local and global variables
How to create and use modules
How to create a module
How to document a module
How to import a module
The Convert Temperatures program
How to use standard modules
How to use the random module
The Guess the Number game
How to plan the functions of a program
How to use a hierarchy chart
The hierarchy chart for the Pig Dice game
The Pig Dice game with global variables
The Pig Dice game with local variables
Chapter 5 How to test and debug a program
An introduction to testing and debugging
The three types of errors that can occur
Common Python errors
Four techniques for testing and debugging
How to plan the test runs
A simple way to trace code execution
How to use top-down coding and testing to simplify debugging
How to use the IDLE shell to test functions
How to use the IDLE debugger
How to set and remove breakpoints
How to step through the code
How to view the stack
Chapter 6 How to work with lists and tuples
Basic skills for working with lists
How to create a list
How to get and set items
How to add and remove items
How to process the items in a list
How lists are passed to functions
The Movie List program
How to work with a list of lists
How to create a list of lists
How to process the items in a list of lists
The Movie List 2D program
More skills for working with lists
How to count, reverse, and sort the items in a list
How to use other functions with lists
How to copy, slice, and concatenate lists
How to work with tuples
How to create a tuple
How to get items from a tuple
The Number Crunching program
Chapter 7 How to work with file I/O
An introduction to file I/O
How file I/O works
How to open and close a file
How to use text files
How to write a text file
How to read a text file
How to work with a list in a text file
The Movie List 1.0 program
How to use CSV files
How to write a CSV file
How to read a CSV file
How to modify the CSV format
The Movie List 2.0 program
How to use binary files
How to work with a binary file
The Movie List 3.0 program
Chapter 8 How to handle exceptions
How to handle a single exception
How exceptions work
How to use a try statement to handle one type of exception
The Total Calculator program
How to handle multiple exceptions
How to use a try statement to handle multiple exceptions
How to get the information from an exception object
The Movie List 2.0 program
Two more skills
How to use a finally clause
How to raise an exception
Section 2 Other concepts and skills
Chapter 9 How to work with numbers
Basic skills for working with numbers
How floating-point numbers work
How to use the math module
How to format numbers
How to use the format() method of a string
How to use the locale module
How to fix rounding errors
How to work with decimal numbers
How to use the decimal module
The Invoice program with decimal numbers
The Future Value program with decimal numbers
Chapter 10 How to work with strings
Basic skills for working with strings
Unicode, indexes, slicing, duplicating, and multiline strings
How to search a string
How to loop through the characters in a string
How to use basic string methods
How to find and replace parts of a string
The Create Account program
How to split and join strings
How to split a string into a list of strings
How to join strings
The Movie List 2D program
The Word Counter program
The Hangman game
The user interface
The hierarchy chart
The wordlist module
The hangman module
Chapter 11 How to work with dates and times
How to get started with dates and times
How to create date, time, and datetime objects
How to create datetime objects by parsing strings
How to format dates and times
How to work with spans of time
The Invoice Due Date program
The Timer program
More skills for working with dates and times
How to get date and time parts
How to compare date/time objects
The Hotel Reservation program
Chapter 12 How to work with dictionaries
How to get started with dictionaries
How to create a dictionary
How to get, set, and add items
How to delete items
How to loop through keys and values
How to convert between dictionaries and lists
The Country Code program
The Word Counter program
More skills for working with dictionaries
How to use dictionaries with complex objects as values
The Book Catalog program
Chapter 13 How to work with recursion and algorithms
An introduction to recursion
How recursion works in Python
How to use recursion to add a range of numbers
Some common recursive algorithms
How to compute the factorial of a number
How to compute a Fibonacci series
An algorithm for solving the Towers of Hanoi puzzle
The code for solving the Towers of Hanoi puzzle
Section 3 Object-oriented programming
Chapter 14 How to define and use your own classes
An introduction to classes and objects
Two UML diagrams for the Product class
Code that defines a Product class
Code that uses a Product class
How to create and use objects
How to define a class
How to code a constructor and attributes
How to code methods
The Product Viewer 1.0 program
How work with object composition
How object composition works
The Die and Dice classes
The Dice Roller 1.0 program
How to work with encapsulation
How object encapsulation works
How to hide attributes
How to access hidden attributes with methods
How to access hidden attributes with properties
The Die and Dice classes with encapsulation
The Product class with some encapsulation
The Pig Dice game
The console
The code
Chapter 15 How to work with inheritance
How to work with inheritance
How inheritance works
How to define a subclass
How polymorphism works
How to check an object’s type
The Product Viewer 2.0 program
The objects module
The user interface and product_viewer module
How to override object methods
How to define a string representation for an object
How to define an iterator for an object
The Die and Dice classes
Two more skills for the road
How to work with custom exceptions
When to use inheritance
Chapter 16 How to design an object-oriented program
Techniques for object-oriented design
Five steps for designing an object-oriented program
How to identify the data attributes
How to subdivide the data attributes
How to identify the classes
How to identify the methods
How the three-tier architecture works
The Shopping Cart program
The business tier
The database tier
The presentation tier
Section 4 Database and GUI programming
Chapter 17 How to work with a database
An introduction to relational databases
How a database table is organized
How the tables in a database are related
How the columns in a table are defined
How to use the SQL statements for data manipulation
How to select data from a single table
How to select data from multiple tables
How to insert, update, and delete rows
How to use SQLite Manager to work with a database
How to connect to a SQLite database
How to execute SQL statements
How to use Python to work with a database
How to connect to a SQLite database
How to execute SELECT statements
How to get the rows in a result set
How to execute INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements
How to test the database code
How to handle database exceptions
The Movie List program
The user interface
The business tier
The database tier
The presentation tier
Chapter 18 How to build a GUI program
How to create a GUI that handles an event
How to display a root window
How to work with frames and buttons
How to handle a button click event
More skills for working with components
How to work with labels and text entry fields
How to lay out components in a grid
How to code a class that defines a frame
The Future Value program
The business module
The ui module
Appendix A How to set up Windows for this book
How to install the source code for this book
How to install Python and IDLE
How to install Firefox and SQLite Manager
How to verify that the database is installed correctly
Appendix B How to set up Mac OS X for this book
How to install the source code for this book
How to install Python and IDLE
How to verify that Python and IDLE are working correctly
How to install Firefox and SQLite Manager
How to verify that the database is installed correctly
In contrast to other college publishers, we don’t fill dozens of pages in our books with end-of-chapter (EOC) activities that may never be used. Instead, we provide everything you need for an effective course in a download from our instructor’s website. Then, you decide which of these materials you want to use.
What follows is a brief summary of the instructor’s materials for this book; for a detailed description in PDF, please read the Instructor's Summary. As we see it, these materials provide everything that you need for running a great course...without the counter-productive busywork of other texts.
EOC exercises
- In the EOC activities for all of our books, you’ll find carefully designed exercises that let your students (1) practice what they’ve just learned and (2) help them apply what they’ve learned in new ways.
- What’s different about these? Other books may have a ton of exercises, but each covers maybe one or two skills at a time. So if you assign one, or even a dozen, students still don’t get to practice all the other skills, and they never see how the skills interact. But if you assign just one of the exercises in our Python book, your students will practice almost everything in the chapter, as they would in the real world.
- Our exercises start from partial programs, so your students can focus on new skills and not waste time on repetitive code that they’d never code from scratch in a work environment.
- Students can download the solutions to the EOC exercises (as well as the exercise starts) for free from our retail website. We started providing the solutions for the professionals who use our books for self-training. But we’ve found that they keep students from giving up when they get stuck on a problem at midnight, and that the model code also helps them refine their future work. And don’t worry! We provide additional projects and case studies that you can use for testing, where the solutions are available only to instructors (see below).
- Taken together, this unique system allows students to practice more…and learn more!…in much less time.
Objectives
- Today, most textbooks include objectives, but they are often so poorly conceived that they are ignored by both students and instructors. In contrast, we provide objectives that describe the skills that the students should master, and mastery can be measured by the test banks, projects, and case studies that we provide. As a result, our objectives actually do facilitate learning.
Test banks
- To test comprehension, we provide test banks in multiple formats, including all of the current Blackboard formats (which can be imported into Canvas and Desire2Learn), Respondus, and Rich Text (RTF).
- Each test bank provides questions that are designed to test the skills described by the objectives for that chapter, and each test question is designed to test the skill described by one objective. This keeps the promise to the students that they will only be expected to have the skills that are described by the objectives.
- In the test banks, we use only multiple-choice test questions because they’re easy to score and (more important) have the highest validity. In other words, the students with the best knowledge and skills will get the best scores. In contrast, matching and true/false questions have low validity, so we don’t use them.
Projects
- The best way to develop programming skills is to write, test, and debug programs from scratch. To that end, we provide a set of projects for each chapter. These projects can be used for both practice and tests.
- To make the projects as useful as possible, ours provide a range of difficulty levels. That way, you can assign projects at levels that are appropriate for the students in your class.
- Because your students should be able to finish some of these projects in an hour or less, you can also use these projects as tests that can be done in a computer lab. That is the only sure way to test whether your students have the skills described by the objectives.
Case studies
- We also provide case studies for this book that can be used as midterm or final projects. These case studies are designed so they shouldn’t take more than 10 or 12 hours. But they are also designed so you can easily modify them so they’re more or less difficult.
PowerPoint slides
- In our books, the figures present all of the critical information including screen shots, diagrams, tables, examples, and programs. Then, we build our PowerPoint slides from the figures, which means that our slides let you review everything that’s presented in the book. This makes it easy to answer any questions that your students raise or review any skills that your students are having trouble with.
- In addition, the slides for each chapter start with the objectives for the chapter. They also end with slides that summarize the projects and case studies so it’s easy to review and discuss them.
A turnkey package
- Our instructor’s materials also include everything else that you need for the course, like all the starting files and solutions for the projects and case studies. So what you end up with is a turnkey package for a powerful Python course.
To view the "Frequently Asked Questions" for this book in a PDF, just click on this link: View the questions
Then, if you have any questions that aren't answered here, please email us. Thanks!
To view the corrections for this book in a PDF, just click on this link: View the corrections
Then, if you find any other errors, please email us so we can correct them in the next printing of the book. Thank you!
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