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3 Icons Used in This Book

This document introduces icons used in the book and provides additional online resources for readers. The icons indicate tips, warnings, advanced techniques, and essential information. Beyond the book, online resources include a cheat sheet, articles on parts pages, updates to content, and companion files with code examples. Readers are advised to start at Chapter 1 and progress through the book to fully understand the material, but some prior experience allows skipping earlier chapters.

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julius obregon
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45 views

3 Icons Used in This Book

This document introduces icons used in the book and provides additional online resources for readers. The icons indicate tips, warnings, advanced techniques, and essential information. Beyond the book, online resources include a cheat sheet, articles on parts pages, updates to content, and companion files with code examples. Readers are advised to start at Chapter 1 and progress through the book to fully understand the material, but some prior experience allows skipping earlier chapters.

Uploaded by

julius obregon
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Introduction 3

Icons Used in This Book


As you read this book, you see icons in the margins that indicate material of
interest (or not, as the case may be).This section briefly describes each icon
in this book.

Tips are nice because they help you save time or perform some task without a
lot of extra work. The tips in this book are time-saving techniques or pointers
to resources that you should try in order to get the maximum benefit from
Python.

I don’t want to sound like an angry parent or some kind of maniac, but you
should avoid doing anything marked with a Warning icon. Otherwise, you
could find that your program only serves to confuse users, who will then
refuse to work with it.

Whenever you see this icon, think advanced tip or technique. You might find
these tidbits of useful information just too boring for words, or they could
contain the solution you need to get a program running. Skip these bits of
information whenever you like.

If you don’t get anything else out of a particular chapter or section, remember
the material marked by this icon. This text usually contains an essential pro-
cess or a bit of information that you must know to write Python programs
successfully.

Beyond the Book


This book isn’t the end of your Python programming experience — it’s really
just the beginning. I provide online content to make this book more flexible
and better able to meet your needs. That way, as I receive e-mail from you,
I can do things like address questions and tell you how updates to either
Python or its associated libraries affect book content. In fact, you gain access
to all these cool additions:

✓ Cheat sheet: You remember using crib notes in school to make a better
mark on a test, don’t you? You do? Well, a cheat sheet is sort of like that.
It provides you with some special notes about tasks that you can do with
Python that not every other developer knows. You can find the cheat
sheet for this book at http://www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/beg
inningprogrammingwithpython. It contains really neat information
like the top ten mistakes developers make when working with Python and
some of the Python syntax that gives most developers problems.
4 Beginning Programming with Python For Dummies

✓ Dummies.com online articles: A lot of readers were skipping past the


parts pages in the book, so I decided to remedy that. You now have a
really good reason to read the parts pages, and that’s online content.
Every parts page has an article associated with it that provides addi-
tional interesting information that wouldn’t fit in the book. You can find
the articles for this book at http://www.dummies.com/extras/begi
nningprogrammingwithpython.
✓ Updates: Sometimes changes happen. For example, I might not have
seen an upcoming change when I looked into my crystal ball during
the writing of this book. In the past, that simply meant the book would
become outdated and less useful, but you can now find updates to the
book at http://www.dummies.com/extras/beginningprogrammin
gwithpython.
In addition to these updates, check out the blog posts with answers to
reader questions and demonstrations of useful book-related techniques
at http://blog.johnmuellerbooks.com/.
✓ Companion files: Hey! Who really wants to type all the code in the book?
Most readers would prefer to spend their time actually working through
coding examples, rather than typing. Fortunately for you, the source code
is available for download, so all you need to do is read the book to learn
Python coding techniques. Each of the book examples even tells you pre-
cisely which example project to use. You can find these files at http://
www.dummies.com/extras/beginningprogrammingwithpython.

Where to Go from Here


It’s time to start your Programming with Python adventure! If you’re a complete
programming novice, you should start with Chapter 1 and progress through the
book at a pace that allows you to absorb as much of the material as possible.

If you’re a novice who’s in an absolute rush to get going with Python as quickly
as possible, you could skip to Chapter 2 with the understanding that you may
find some topics a bit confusing later. Skipping to Chapter 3 is possible if you
already have Python installed, but be sure to at least skim Chapter 2 so that
you know what assumptions were made when writing this book.

Readers who have some exposure to Python can save time by moving directly
to Chapter 5. You can always go back to earlier chapters as necessary when
you have questions. However, it’s important that you understand how each
example works before moving to the next one. Every example has important
lessons for you, and you could miss vital content if you start skipping too
much information.
Part I
Getting Started with Python

.
In this part . . .
✓ Discover what programming is all about and why you need
Python to do it.
✓ Get your own copy of Python and install it on your system.
✓ Work with the interactive environment that Python
provides.
✓ Create your first application using Python.
✓ Understand the benefits of adding comments to your
application.

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