Getting started in programming is confusing—what language should you learn? What approach makes learning easiest? Where do you start?

There are many answers to these questions, and none of them is right for every person in every situation. There are, however, some choices that are highly recommended and that have past successes to back them up.

This ebook will let you explore the basics of programming with one of the most popular languages in the world right now, Python. Python is popular in a number of areas—it powers the Django web framework, which makes it easy to create database powered web sites; it’s an all purpose work horse on the back end, gluing programs together and connecting data pipelines; with tools like pandas, numpy, and tensor-flow (and many, many others) it’s a star in data science; and combined with the tiny (but mighty) raspberry pi and other boards it puts the power of computing literally in the palm of your hand.

This sampler brings to together chapters from three Manning books to help you explore the basics of this powerful language and decide if Python is the language for you. It starts with picking up the basics of coding and how to think like a coder from Ana Bell’s Get Programming.

After that we move to the world of makers with Hello Raspberry Pi by Ryan Heitz.

These chapters introduce the truly inexpensive raspberry pi computer and show how to wire up LED’s to it and control them with simple Python code. Finally, for a more in depth look at “The Absolute Basics” of Python there are two chapters from my book, The Quick Python Book.

Each of these three books represents a different, but tried and tested, approach to learning to code with Python. The selections that follow will help you decide which of them is right for you.

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