This book is perfect for the beginner programmer. Whether you have prior experience or not, you will come away with useful information and valuable experience. I have read it through once, and am now going back through and working on the sample code you develop. I have never had so much fun, nor have I ever found a book that did a better job of being informative but not too much. He works you from Hello World to a simple but graphic game, teaching you Python, programming convention and how to apply what you have learned to several types of situations. I cannot say how much I love this book, or how great it has been to finally find an author who can get the job done. Five stars, only because that's the highest I can give!

This is a good first book on programming for a junior high school kid or a motivated elementary school kid.

If you are a programmer looking to learn the Python language, this book is not for you. It's not intended to be for you, and you will find it slow-paced and tedious. Instead, as its title says, it's for people who want to learn to program, and Python is the weapon of choice for this author. I'm a long-time professional software guy, and I bought this book as a possible tutorial for my kids. It is pretty amazingly good for that. The sample programs are realistic enough. They're also short enough that someone can type them in as they go along. The author takes the reader all the way from "no experience required" all the way through OOP. Each step is gentle and encouraging. Along the way, the author points out what is a requirement and what is just convention. Computer jargon is explained in comfortable terms for the beginner.

Service from Amazon dot com is excellent. The book was received in good order. The content of the book fulfilled my expectations. I had no direction in any programming language. This book is absolute for beginners and I have some kind of direction to plan and expand my programming knowledge with Python.

This is a pretty good book for learning basic python... and how to use the basic tools of Tkinter... and how to use a modified version of Livewires... The problem here is that you never learn how to access anything beyond the scope of basic self-contained programming and the highly limited capabilities of these pre-made modules. If you want to be able to interact with your hardware, the internet, or anything other than math and games, you're out of luck. Common sense would tell you not to start a beginning programmer with a reliance on one graphics module and one GUI module, neither of which you expect them to even take a peek at the source of, but then, common sense would require students not to expect to have graphics handed to them on a silver platter. The first nine chapters are good work though... The 10th and 11th simply give in to the students' wishes that they could go ahead and have a graphic interface without doing any of the work, and that's not good teaching.

I think there were some errors in this book. I do know it was rather distressing in a way.

The book is full of lessons, and I always wondered exactly where they were going with them.. what were they going to accomplish? Everything seems so unfinished in the book.

I recall a lot of emphasis on games... I don't care about games.

I have a Macintosh computer, and use Poser. I am distressed because some Poser-related utilities don't come in Macintosh versions. I thought I'd try to learn Python and write some of my own.

I gave up after less than 100 pages. I think these people are so caught up in their own knowledge that they forget to see things through the eyes of rank beginners who are desperate to learn programming.

This book joins a collection of other books that are truly disappointing.

Important update 2008-4-23 to review below: I sent the author an email through his website, and within 3 hours he had emailed back to me the modified software I needed. Yes, I still think he should have that software posted on his website, but his quick response certainly helped me out of the trouble I was in!


My daughter is using this book to learn to program for her class project, and the CD is at school. Meanwhile, I am trying to set up the same environment for her on our home computer, which is a Mac. So I got my python up-to-date, installed Pygame, no problem, then for her to do the examples in Chapter 11 on graphics, she needs the livewires package. Only then I encounter the "TRAP" on page 330 - the livewires package on the CD that comes with the book is a modified version of the livewires package available on the web. And the example programs do not work with the standard livewires release. And the book does not give source code differences for the modified package, nor is the modified package available on the author's website or anywhere else I can find (although this entire chapter is available on-line as an assignment for a computer science course, making me feel foolish for buying the book). So I am left unable to create the programming environment at home to match what's in this book. This situation is directly against the portability/openness philosophy of Python, and is causing me a lot of trouble. Mr. Dawson should have stuck with stock, publicly-available packages as the platform for his instructional text. Failing that, he should have tried to get his changes incorporated into a livewires release. Failing that, he should distribute the modified livewires himself via the internet (livewires is BSD-licensed itself), since it is easy for book and CD to become separated, and the book is much less valuable without his own private version of livewires. If you lose the CD, you'll never be able to run his example code in the text of chapters 11 and 12. "TRAP" indeed!

My daughter is using this book to learn to program for her class project, and the CD is at school. Meanwhile, I am trying to set up the same environment for her on our home computer, which is a Mac. So I got my python up-to-date, installed Pygame, no problem, then for her to do the examples in Chapter 11 on graphics, she needs the livewires package. Only then I encounter the "TRAP" on page 330 - the livewires package on the CD that comes with the book is a modified version of the livewires package available on the web. And the example programs do not work with the standard livewires release. And the book does not give source code differences for the modified package, nor is the modified package available on the author's website or anywhere else I can find (although this entire chapter is available on-line as an assignment for a computer science course, making me feel foolish for buying the book). So I am left unable to create the programming environment at home to match what's in this book. This situation is directly against the portability/openness philosophy of Python, and is causing me a lot of trouble. Mr. Dawson should have stuck with stock, publicly-available packages as the platform for his instructional text. Failing that, he should have tried to get his changes incorporated into a livewires release. Failing that, he should distribute the modified livewires himself via the internet (livewires is BSD-licensed itself), since it is easy for book and CD to become separated, and the book is much less valuable without his own private version of livewires. If you lose the CD, you'll never be able to run his example code in the text of chapters 11 and 12. "TRAP" indeed!

Very easy to understand and great for first time programmers. A bit slow for those more experienced. Still, highly recommended

If you are new to Python, this book is worth owning--it didn't disappoint. Included a disc. Problem-free, quick learning curve.

This is an excellent learning text that takes the reader from a beginner programmer to a gaming programmer. It starts off at the command line interface using the imperative paradigm. It goes through a detailed series of lessons and practical examples that leads the reader to using a graphical user interface and using object oriented programming. The CD comes with solutions to the exercises. Examples are very well explained. This is the text to read to comprehend the OOP paradigm.

I think many a man purchasing books and making comments without browsing the title of the book and the preface. The title of a book and its preface is the best place to show where the authors writing to which group of readers or what's the target of the book.

This book is for absolute beginners, therefore, there is little point to compare with books aiming at a higher level other than beginners. You cannot compare a good apple with an orange, like with like.

In brief, this is an interesting and fascinating computer book for starters. You won't be frighten by traditional computer books with thousand pages and hard to read printing. This one is easy and lead you to go through the book.

If there is no one to tempt you to dive into a swimming pool, you never have the chance to experience the joy of swimming.

I am a musician who is using Python for various small to large projects. I find it to be the easiest, fastest way to get useful results. Of the six books I've read, this one is the best introduction to programming with Python that I've used. Others are more complete in their coverage, but none are more fun. If your interest in programming is limited to creating useful scripts easily and in a hurry, Python is for you. And this book is the best to show you how.

I bought this book as a requirement for my university level beginning programming class. The book is great! It has easy step by step instructions and creates an environment that is easy to follow along with using your own computer.

I recommend this book for anybody looking to learn the basics of Python programming!

This is a good book to get a beginner hooked on programing.
I don't care for the IDLE, (edit environment provided on CD),
but the text is concise and the subject material is not
obfuscated with unnecessary deflections, if you know what I
mean. I purchased another copy for my children, if it stimulates a
curiosity, to experiment with software, in anyone of them I'll
petition Amazon to add another star.

I'm new to programming, python is my first language to learn. This book does a good job on getting the beginner started in programming, however it does not go into to much detail and the book does jump around a lot. But as i said it is a good book for the absolute beginner, but if you want to go in to detail and understand things better i would recommend a different book.

I thought this a good book especially for beginners. what's missing are more problems by which your knowledge can be tested, however. Overall, however, it's a good start.

I actually started with the O'reilly books and they are great, but if your new to programming/scripting, this book is a better place to start. It will get you up and running with Python fast. yeah, its easy, but I think that's the point (hence the title "Absolute Beginners"). The exercises are fun and get the concepts across very well. If you've mastered other languages, go with O'reilly. if you are new to coding start with this book.

If you are, indeed, absolutely new to programming, but want to learn a language that is freely available, sensible, and designed right from the very start, you can do no better than Python. This book, again if you are absolutely new to programming, does a great job of introducing some very complicated subjects in a simple and accessible way. Dawson's examples are intriguing and fun to work with, leaving plenty of room for the novice to try new things and alter them to suit his or her needs. In fact, I would advise the reader to work the samples and then rework them incorporating some of your own ideas just to see what works and what doesn't.

This book (thankfully!) is not a manual of complicated syntax and style, which is the last thing the novice needs to build confidence with a new language when first starting out. A student of programming needs early successes to pull them through the not-so-fun parts of programming that eventually occur. This book is packed with early successes that will encourage a reader to go out and seek other more complicated books on Python, of which there are many. Of all the "beginning python" books I've read, this is by far the best.

a great alternative to learning python (o'reily). It eases beginners into python through coding games, which may sound a little bit childish, but they are pretty good examples. they can also be expanded on a lot. It is less hardcore than learning python, but I thought they worked great in tandem.

Python has become very popular recently, as a perusal of the list servers on the various programming languages attests to. The author of this book points to its widespread use in game programming, and a perusal of the contents of the book will reveal the influence of Python in this area. This reviewer has used Python in the context of Web application modeling, where it's conciseness and ease of use made it very helpful. This book was helpful in the actual learning of Python in order to carry out this effort, but this reviewer cannot speak to its power in game programming since he has never used it in that context. The book therefore was not read in its entirety, but only parts deemed useful for learning Python in order to carry out useful tasks. The book is advertised as one that is directed to readers who are `absolute beginners', so some of the contents will seem very elementary to those readers with programming experience. Readers who might be thinking of learning Python but want evidence of its success can go to the Python.org site to find examples of its application. This reviewer does not know of any cases where Python has been used for heavy-duty number crunching, but it looks as though this is in the realm of possibility.

When learning Python one will observe a certain simplicity in its syntax, and for those readers/programmers who despise creating user-defined interfaces from scratch, Python come with its own GUI, which is called IDLE (IDE on a Mac platform). Python is touted as being object-oriented, and is compared in this regard with C# and Java in the book. However, these languages are not truly object-oriented, given the existence of primitive types in them. The author though points out that contrary to these languages, the use of Python as an object-oriented language is optional, to be used only for large projects where object-oriented programming really has its power.

The scoping rules in Python are typical for a language that is globally scoped. The variables inside function definitions are local to the function, i.e. are in its `namespace' and cannot be accessed from any other namespace. This allows variables with the same name to be used in different functions. But even though you cannot access variables in a local namespace if you are in a global namespace, you can change global variables from inside functions, as the author illustrates with an explicit example. In addition, one can give a variable inside a function the same name as a global variable and `shadow' the global variable. This allows one to change the value of a global variable inside a namespace for processing purposes, but the original value is unchanged in the global namespace. The author correctly warns against the use of global variables, due to the possibilities of side effects. Global constants however are encouraged.

I have been using this to teach my nephew Python. It is a great place to start as it gets very quickly to something visual to keep kids interested, while at the same time covering lots of useful ideas and concepts. If you want to show a beginner how quickly they can actually produce a real game with their own flavor on it, this is the book.

This book is definatley worth the price (18 bucks) however, if you want to get a solid foundation in Python, I would suggest skipping over this book entirely and reading; "Learning Python" by Mark Lutz and David Ascher published by: Oreilly.

This book assumes that the reader has absolutely no knowledge of computer programming just as they claim. It was a little too basic for my taste and I am going to assume that it is too basic even for a lot of beginning programmers. I am giving it 3 stars because I believe that any novice programmer will comfortably pick up the fundamentals of Python programming from this book. On the same note, I'm giving it only 3 stars because this book has some very hard competition such as the book that I mention earlier in this review. If you truly believe that you will learn the fundamentals of Python programming a lot better by developing rudamentary video games and you don't mind redundant elementary step by step basic instructions than this book is definetly for you. However, if you want to get a good solid foundation in Python programming from a book that does not assume you are a 6th grade bedroom junkie, than maybe you should look elsewhere (as in the Oreilly book mentioned earlier).
I did not find any editing errors in this book and it seems to be organized quite well.