Fundamentals of Python: First Programs, Third Edition

Learning Python is more than memorizing syntax: it is learning how to break a problem into steps, organize those steps, and test whether the program does what you intended. Kenneth A. Lambert’s Fundamentals of Python: First Programs builds that foundation before steadily widening the view to data structures, graphics, user interfaces, and object-oriented programming.

This third edition is an introductory programming textbook, with a progression that connects early concepts to increasingly substantial applications. Its exercises and debugging practice give readers opportunities to work with the ideas rather than only read about them.

Start with the logic behind the code

The opening chapters introduce algorithms, the software development process, data types, expressions, loops, and selection statements. From there, the book turns to strings and text files, lists and dictionaries, and the design of reusable functions. Recursion and higher-order functions extend that foundation into additional ways of expressing solutions.

Put Python to work in visible ways

Graphics and image processing offer a change of perspective from terminal-based programs, while the GUI chapters introduce event-driven applications and common interface components. Later material develops classes, inheritance, and polymorphism, then moves into data analysis and visualization, multithreading, networks, searching, sorting, and complexity analysis.

Practice is part of the design

Chapter summaries, key terms, review questions, programming exercises, and debugging exercises support a learn-and-try approach. The appendices also point readers toward Python resources and selected libraries covered in the text.

A broad first course in Python

Designed for introductory programming and problem-solving study at the undergraduate or high-school level, this book suits learners who want a structured route from fundamentals toward a wider range of computer science topics. It gives the first program a context—and shows what can come after it.