Coding for Beginners: Using Python (Coding for Beginners): 1

My child is starting a Computer Science GCSE and will be using Python, so I ordered a few "starter" books to see which I felt would be most enjoyable and appropriate. One reviewer criticised this one for being a "cartoon book", but I felt the colourful presentation and information boxes were more likely to appeal to a teenager, rather than the other more serious and dull black and white books. The programs are fun, with silly comments like "Nooooooo! The aliens have outnumbered us. All is lost." and "The dragon wakes up and eats you. You are delicious." It is quick and easy to get started with the coding and it builds up skills gradually. I feel sure it will give my child a good basic knowledge of Python before he starts this element of his GCSE.

This is an excellent book for beginners as it covers what to expect in Windows, Mac and how to download the Python software. The book covers the topic of Variables as it states the purpose of a variable and data types. A section on the topic of ‘PROGRAM CONSTRUCTS’ should have been added before introducing the topic ‘MAKING DECISIONS’. This would have been useful to people new to programming and those with a little knowledge of programming but moving on to Python. I hope a section on the topic of program constructs is included to a revised edition to make the book very valuable to children and adults entering university or those in colleges learning programming for the first time. Another useful coverage is how to save your file and that ‘a variable is like a labelled box that stores information’, this is an area that is very confusing to a beginner programmer as they cannot visualise what a variable is so you have to bring it down to that level. Excellent illustration, this makes the book very useful to beginners. The lesson learnt from using this book is transferable to other programming language.

Useful little book with clear instructions and pictures to make it fun for kids to learn python. The only problem we faced was that some commands didn't work and we had to Google the latest versions. Perhaps old versions of the book should be discontinued from the market.

Excellent book. Up to date; 2017 and uses Python 3 (which is important as that’s what is used in most schools and I don’t want to go through version re-learning with beginners). Find it’s just right for my 10yo. Great style and engaging for kids. This is crucial as Python is a bit dry at first as kids move from the immediate visual rewards of scratch to a command-line based environment. Did a lot of research before buying and few books were as current or as engaging for beginning python. I’d commend this to anyone starting python.

I bought this to help my daughter in her first steps into programming and she loves it. The tasks are simple and well structured with advice on what to look for when you code is wrong. The book takes you through a series of exercises to construct a dungeons and dragons style game. This book is ideal as a first step for any age, but is primarily aimed at children and we use the book and the exercises as father/daughter bonding, which we’ve both really enjoyed.

This is a really good and eye catching book, if you are interested in coding but don’t know very much about it, it’s a good place to start. It’s easy to follow and it has practical exercises so you can start coding right away.

This is such a great book - it covers Python from the very basics upwards, with simple explanations, some great coding examples and lovely fun illustrations. It's so good, I've been learning from it over Twitch!

I decided to buy this book to introduce coding to my 10 year old son. We've never done coding before so was excited to try this out. Overall the book is very clear and easy to follow but as newbies so to speak, we encountered coding errors on the first couple of tasks despite following the book instructions - line by line and word by word - still errors. It's a shame as we were excited to test these out but frustrated that we couldn't fix them to run the program - despite trying to find a resolution. The Dragonsnax and Aliens invading had errors. Will continue to try the rest of the tasks but can only give 3 stars for now.