A Note to Parents and Fellow
P
rogrammers
Thank your for reading this book. My motivation for writing this book comes from a gap
I saw in today's literature for kids interested in learning to program. I started programming
when I was 9 years old in the BASIC language with a book similar to this one. During the
course of writing this, I've realized how a modern language like Python has made
programming far easier and versatile for a new generation of programmers. Python has a
gentle learning curve while still being a serious language that is used by programmers
professionally.
The current crop of programming books for kids that I've seen fell into two categories.
First, books that did not teach programming so much as "game creation software" or a
dumbed-down languages to make programming "easy" (to the point that it is no longer
programming). Or second, they taught programming like a mathematics textbook: all
principles and concepts with little application given to the reader. This book takes a
different approach: show the source code for games right up front and explain
programming principles from the examples.
I have also made this book available under the Creative Commons license, which allows
you to make copies and distribute this book (or excerpts) with my full permission, as long
as attribution to me is left intact and it is used for noncommercial purposes. (See the
copyright page.) I want to make this book a gift to a world that has given me so much.
Thank you again for reading this book, and feel free to email me any questions or
comments.
Al Sweigart
The full text of this book is available in HTML or PDF format at:
http://inventwithpython.com
