GeezerVison

GeezerVison is showing inventwithpython.com — The Big Book of Small Python Projects

This curated collection of simple Python projects lets you dive right in and make digital art, games, animations, number-crunching tools and more – right away! Forget standard step-by-step tutorials; instead, author Al Sweigart takes a learn-by-doing approach that provides you with over 80 programs to manually copy, run, and play with. Once you see how the code works, it’s time to experiment with your own changes and practice re-creating them yourself.

Each project is a standalone mini-chapter that includes a sample run of the program’s output, the source code, and suggestions for customization. Whether it’s a vintage screensaver, a snail-racing game, a clickbait headline generator, or animated strands of your DNA, these simple, text-based programs are small – limited to 256 lines of code or less – and designed to be self-contained in a single source-code file so you can easily post and share them online.

Watch a trailer video of the book's programming projects.

You’ll create:

Hangman, Blackjack and other games to play against a computer or your friends
Simulations of a spreading forest fire, a million dice rolls, and a Japanese abacus
Animation programs, like a fish tank, a rotating cube, and a bouncing DVD logo
Mazes that you design then escape from, and a 3D Maze Runner-like video game
Encryption programs that use ciphers like ROT13 and Vigenère to conceal text

For those who’ve mastered basic Python syntax and are ready to have fun making programs, the projects in this book will spark new ideas for what’s possible within just a few pages of code.

"I've always been impressed by the variety of simple, but interesting and fun, projects Al can come up with and this collection takes that to the next level. . . . Even experienced coders are likely to be pulled into browsing through the wide variety that Al has put into this book."

—Naomi Ceder, author of The Quick Python Book and Fellow of the Python Software Foundation

"Al Sweigart presents fun programs, inspiring learners to tweak them. That's how I learned to program: tinkering with examples from books and magazines. It works!"

—Luciano Ramalho, Technical Principal at ThoughtWorks and author of Fluent Python

"Whether you're new to Python or want to exercise your coding brain, I recommend The Big Book of Small Python Projects to spark your thinking. Both the 'big' and the 'small' in the title are accurate. There are a lot of projects in this book, but most code takes up only a page or two. That makes it a fun reference book to get you into the flow or kick off a session in your terminal."

—Adam DuVander, Founder, EveryDeveloper

"This book is excellent for beginners to Python and a great reference book for programmers who are well versed in programming. I'm happy to give this book 5 out of 5 stars!"

—Greg Walters, Full Circle Magazine

"This book is packed with fun and easy programs, I can confirm."

—BC Gain, @bcamerongain

Teaching Python Podcast episode 64 discussed the book.

The Real Python Podcast episode 77 interviewed Al Sweigart about the book.

Read the Book Online

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