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The Big Book of Small Python Projects

81 Easy Practice Programs

Author Al Sweigart

Paperback

$39.99 US

No Starch | No Starch Press

7.01"W x 9.2"H x 0.94"D | 28 oz | 16 per carton

On sale Jun 25, 2021 | 432 Pages | 9781718501249

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Best-selling author Al Sweigart shows you how to easily build over 80 fun programs with minimal code and maximum creativity.

If you’ve mastered basic Python syntax and you’re ready to start writing programs, you’ll find The Big Book of Small Python Projects both enlightening and fun. This collection of 81 Python projects will have you making digital art, games, animations, counting pro- grams, and more right away. Once you see how the code works, you’ll practice re-creating the programs and experiment by adding your own custom touches.

These simple, text-based programs are 256 lines of code or less. And whether it’s a vintage screensaver, a snail-racing game, a clickbait headline generator, or animated strands of DNA, each project is designed to be self-contained so you can easily share it online.

You’ll create:
• Hangman, Blackjack, and other games to play against your friends or the computer
• Simulations of a forest fire, a million dice rolls, and a Japanese abacus
• Animations like a virtual fish tank, a rotating cube, and a bouncing DVD logo screensaver
• A first-person 3D maze game
• Encryption programs that use ciphers like ROT13 and Vigenère to conceal text

If you’re tired of standard step-by-step tutorials, you’ll love the learn-by-doing approach of The Big Book of Small Python Projects. It’s proof that good things come in small programs!

Al Sweigart is a professional software developer who teaches programming to kids and adults. Sweigart has written several bestselling programming books for beginners, including Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python, Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python, Cracking Codes with Python, and Coding with Minecraft (all from No Starch Press).

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"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, 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

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