The journey of a thousand miles…

We think Python is a great language, and we're excited to help you get started with it. By the time you get through this book, you will be able to write substantial Python programs, and you'll be able to read even more complex ones. More importantly, you'll have the foundation you need to go out and discover all of the more advanced topics in the language, and hopefully we'll get you excited enough about Python to actually do so. Python is a big language with a huge eco-system of software built in and around it, and it can be a real adventure to discover everything it has to offer.

Welcome to Python!

Though more and more projects are starting to be "primarily Python 3" or even "Python 3 only".

This book came about by circuitous means. In 2013, when we incorporated our Norway-based sofware consultancy and training business Sixty North, we were courted by Pluralsight, a publisher of online video training material, to produce Python training videos for the rapidly growing MOOC market. At the time, we had no experience of producing video training material, but we were sure we wanted to carefully structure our introductory Python content to respect certain constraints. For example, we wanted an absolute minimum of forward references since those would be very inconvenient for our viewers. We're both men of words who live by Turing Award winner Leslie Lamport's maxim "If you're thinking without writing you only think you're thinking", so it was natural for us to attack video course production by first writing a script.

In short order our online video course was written, recorded, and published by Pluralsight as Python Fundamentals, to a hugely positive reception which has sustained for several years now. From the earliest days we had in mind that the script could form the basis of a book, although it's fair to say we underestimated the effort required to transform the content from a good script into a better book.

The Python Apprentice is the result of that transformation. It can be used either as a standalone Python tutorial, or as the companion volume to our video course, depending on which style of learning suits you best. The Python Apprentice is the first in a trilogy of three books, comprising in addition The Python Journeyman and The Python Master. The two later books correspond to our subsequent Pluralsight courses Python – Beyond the Basics and Advanced Python (coming soon!).