Introduction To Computation And Programming Using Python

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1. canadapupsOct 2018
   I built CanadaPups.com.

   At first I started to learn by reading Computer Science 101 textbooks. The intro MIT textbook is in python and has more depth than other CS101 books. (Guttag, John. Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python.)

   I then went practical, I learnt Ruby on Rails via https://www.railstutorial.org/. It was good to provide me with mental framework of how websites are built... html, coding and database.

   For the actual CanadaPups project, I switched from Rails to Django because I found Rails to be too confusing (maybe due to my inexperience at the time).

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2. dxsOct 2022
   I've decided to relearn everything, starting at the very beginning. First up is the Chris Pine book. He's a good writer. It's very simple but fun.

   I was curious and after a bit of looking around I found "Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python with Application to Computational Modeling and Understanding Data", third edition, by John V. Guttag, © 2021. Looks pretty good, though it's a more traditional approach.

   Basically, any language you might be interested in will have introductory books.

   If you have trouble getting ahold of books, you can try (1) www.pdfdrive.com and (2) z-lib.org . The first one feels a little less sketchy but the second one has almost everything I look for, on every subject. I've had no trouble with either one so far, but use at your own risk.

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3. aireoMay 2022
   @ericbarrett -- thanks for this.

   I've been reading a new Python book (_Introduction to Computation and Programming using Python_) and the aforementioned book on C, and I'm doing every exercise in the book. I'll continue coding each day.

   Appreciate your input!

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4. icsJan 2014
   Introduction to Computer Science and Programming is taught by John Guttag which led me to believe that Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python would be the standard course text, however the OCW resources only give links to Amazon and MIT Press for purchase. Makes sense considering that the book has only been out for 1 year exactly, yet MIT Press designates it 'out of print'. The free texts linked then from the course resources are the usual Learn Python the Hard Way, A Byte of Python, Dive into Python, Code Like a Pythonista, and The Python Programming Wikibook. IIRC Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python was a recommended textbook for the MOOC on EdX but was not offered for free there either (even in web view only, which was started in the first MITx MOOC, 6.002x Circuits and Electronics). If I've missed something and this text is in fact freely available now that would be great to know.

   Of the others I've checked most do link directly to the text, either as HTML or PDFs with the exception of some of the Chinese and Japanese courses which provide links to purchase texts but free aids/study guides. It's still a very helpful list, as OCW has grown so large that it can be overwhelming just going through the catalog– a huge achievement on its own, really– before you even get to the content. So much to learn, so many possible routes to take...

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