Introduction to Computing and Programming in Python, 3e, uses multimedia applications to motivate introductory computer science majors or non-majors. The book's hands-on approach shows how programs can be used to build multimedia computer science applications that include sound, graphics, music, pictures, and movies. The students learn a key set of computer science tools and topics, as well as programming skills; such as how to design and use algorithms, and practical software engineering methods. The book also includes optional coverage of HCI, as well as rudimentary data structures and databases using the user-friendly Python language for implementation. Authors Guzdial and Ericson also demonstrate how to communicate compatibly through networks and do concurrent programming.

Table of Contents:
Preface to the Third Edition xv Preface to the Second Edition xvii Preface to the First Edition xix About the Authors xxv 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1 Introduction to Computer Science and Media Computation 3 1.1 What Is Computer Science About? 3 1.2 Programming Languages 6 1.3 What Computers Understand 8 1.4 Media Computation: Why Digitize Media? 11 1.5 Computer Science for Everyone 12 1.5.1 It’s About Communication 12 1.5.2 It’s About Process 12 2 Introduction to Programming 16 2.1 Programming Is About Naming 16 2.1.1 Files and Their Names 18 2.2 Programming in Python 19 2.3 Programming in JES 20 2.4 Media Computation in JES 21 2.4.1 Showing a Picture 25 2.4.2 Playing a Sound 27 2.4.3 Naming Values 28 2.5 Making a Program 31 2.5.1 Variable Recipes: Real Math-Like Functions That Take Input 34 3 Modifying Pictures Using Loops 40 3.1 How Pictures Are Encoded 41 3.2 Manipulating Pictures 46 3.2.1 Exploring Pictures 51 3.3 Changing Color Values 53 3.3.1 Using Loops in Pictures 53 3.3.2 Increasing/Decreasing Red (Green, Blue) 55 3.3.3 Testing the Program: Did That Really Work? 60 3.3.4 Changing One Color at a Time 61 3.4 Creating a Sunset 62 3.4.1 Making Sense of Functions 63 3.5 Lightening and Darkening 67 3.6 Creating a Negative 68 3.7 Converting to Grayscale 69 4 Modifying Pixels in a Range 75 4.1 Copying Pixels 75 4.1.1 Looping Across the Pixels with range 76 4.2 Mirroring a Picture 78 4.3 Copying and Transforming Pictures 86 4.3.1 Copying 86 4.3.2 Creating a Collage 94 4.3.3 General Copying 96 4.3.4 Rotation 98 4.3.5 Scaling 100 5 Picture Techniques with Selection and Combination 107 5.1 Replacing Colors: Red-Eye, Sepia Tones, and Posterizing 108 5.1.1 Reducing Red-Eye 111 5.1.2 Sepia-Toned and Posterized Pictures: Using Conditionals to Choose the Color 113 5.2 Combining Pixels: Blurring 118 5.3 Comparing Pixels: Edge Detection 119 5.4 Blending Pictures 122 5.5 Background Subtraction 125 5.6 Chromakey 127 5.7 Drawing on Images 131 5.7.1 Drawing with Drawing Commands 132 5.7.2 Vector and Bitmap Representations 133 5.8 Selecting Without Re-Testing 135 5.9 Programs as Specifying Drawing Process 136 5.9.1 Why Do We Write Programs? 139 2 SOUND 143 6 Modifying Sounds Using Loops 145 6.1 How Sound Is Encoded 145 6.1.1 The Physics of Sound 145 6.1.2 Exploring How Sounds Look 149 6.1.3 Encoding the Sound 151 6.1.4 Binary Numbers and Two’s Complement 153 6.1.5 Storing Digitized Sounds 154 6.2 Manipulating Sounds 156 6.2.1 Open Sounds and Manipulating Samples 156 6.2.2 Using the JES MediaTools 159 6.2.3 Looping 161 6.3 Changing the Volume of Sounds 161 6.3.1 Increasing Volume 161 6.3.2 Did That Really Work? 162 6.3.3 Decreasing Volume 166 6.3.4 Making Sense of Functions, in Sounds 167 6.4 Normalizing Sounds 167 6.4.1 Generating Clipping 169 7 Modifying Samples in a Range 174 7.1 Manipulating Different Sections of the Sound Differently 174 7.2 Splicing Sounds 177 7.3 General Clip and Copy 183 7.4 Reversing Sounds 186 7.5 Mirroring 187 7.6 On Functions and Scope 188 8 Making Sounds by Combining Pieces 193 8.1 Composing Sounds Through Addition 193 8.2 Blending Sounds 195 8.3 Creating an Echo 196 8.3.1 Creating Multiple Echoes 197 8.3.2 Creating Chords 198 8.4 How Sampling Keyboards Work 198 8.4.1 Sampling as an Algorithm 202 8.5 Additive Synthesis 203 8.5.1 Making SineWaves 203 8.5.2 Adding SineWaves Together 205 8.5.3 Checking Our Result 206 8.5.4 SquareWaves 207 8.5.5 TriangularWaves 210 8.6 Modern Music Synthesis 211 8.6.1 MP3 212 8.6.2 MIDI 212 9 Building Bigger Programs 216 9.1 Designing Programs Top-Down 217 9.1.1 A Top-Down Design Example 218 9.1.2 Designing the Top-Level Function 219 9.1.3 Writing the Subfunctions 221 9.2 Designing Programs Bottom-Up 225 9.2.1 An Example Bottom-Up Process 226 9.3 Testing Your Program 226 9.3.1 Testing the Edge Conditions 228 9.4 Tips on Debugging 228 9.4.1 Finding which Statement to Worry About 230 9.4.2 Seeing the Variables 230 9.4.3 Debugging the Adventure Game 232 9.5 Algorithms and Design 235 9.6 Running Programs Outside of JES 236 3 TEXT, FILES,NETWORKS,DATABASES, AND UNIMEDIA 242 10 Creating and Modifying Text 244 10.1 Text as Unimedia 244 10.2 Strings: Making and Manipulating Strings 245 10.3 Manipulating Parts of Strings 248 10.3.1 String Methods: Introducing Objects and Dot Notation 248 10.3.2 Lists: Powerful, Structured Text 251 10.3.3 Strings Have No Font 253 10.4 Files: Places to Put Your Strings and Other Stuff 254 10.4.1 Opening and Manipulating Files 255 10.4.2 Generating Form Letters 257 10.4.3 Writing Out Programs 258 10.5 The Python Standard Library 262 10.5.1 More on Import and Your Own Modules 263 10.5.2 Another Fun Module: Random 263 10.5.3 A Sampling of Python Standard Libraries 265 11 Advanced Text Techniques: Web and Information 270 11.1 Networks: Getting Our Text from the Web 270 11.2 Using Text to Shift Between Media 277 11.3 Moving Information Between Media 280 11.4 Using Lists As Structured Text for Media Representations 282 11.5 Hiding Information in a Picture 284 12 Making Text for the Web 289 12.1 HTML: The Notation of the Web 289 12.2 Writing Programs to Generate HTML 294 12.3 Databases: A Place to Store Our Text 299 12.3.1 Relational Databases 301 12.3.2 An Example Relational Database Using HashTables 302 12.3.3 Working with SQL 304 12.3.4 Using a Database to Build Web Pages 307 4 MOVIES 311 13 Creating and Modifying Movies 313 13.1 Generating Animations 314 13.2 Working with Video Source 322 13.2.1 Video Manipulating Examples 323 13.3 Building a Video Effect Bottom-Up 326 5 TOPICS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE 333 14 Speed 335 14.1 Focusing on Computer Science 335 14.2 What Makes Programs Fast? 335 14.2.1 What Computers Really Understand 336 14.2.2 Compilers and Interpreters 337 14.2.3 What Limits Computer Speed? 341 14.2.4 Does It Really Make a Difference? 343 14.2.5 Making Searching Faster 345 14.2.6 Algorithms That Never Finish or Can’t Be Written 347 14.2.7 Why Is Photoshop Faster Than JES? 349 14.3 What Makes a Computer Fast? 349 14.3.1 Clock Rates and Actual Computation 350 14.3.2 Storage: What Makes a Computer Slow? 351 14.3.3 Display 352 15 Functional Programming 355 15.1 Using Functions to Make Programming Easier 355 15.2 Functional Programming with Map and Reduce 358 15.3 Functional Programming for Media 362 15.3.1 Media Manipulation Without Changing State 363 15.4 Recursion: A Powerful Idea 364 15.4.1 Recursive Directory Traversals 369 15.4.2 Recursive Media Functions 371 16 Object-Oriented Programming 376 16.1 History of Objects 376 16.2 Working with Turtles 378 16.2.1 Classes and Objects 378 16.2.2 Sending Messages to Objects 379 16.2.3 Objects Control Their State 381 16.3 Teaching Turtles New Tricks 383 16.3.1 Overriding an Existing Turtle Method 385 16.3.2 Using Turtles for More 386 16.4 An Object-Oriented Slide Show 390 16.4.1 Making the Slide Class More Object-Oriented 393 16.5 Object-Oriented Media 395 16.6 Joe the Box 400 16.7 Why Objects? 401 APPENDIX 406 A Quick Reference to Python 406 A.1 Variables 406 A.2 Function Creation 407 A.3 Loops and Conditionals 407 A.4 Operators and Representation Functions 408 A.5 Numeric Functions 409 A.6 Sequence Operations 409 A.7 String Escapes 409 A.8 Useful String Methods 409 A.9 Files 410 A.10 Lists 410 A.11 Dictionaries, Hash Tables, or Associative Arrays 410 A.12 External Modules 410 A.13 Classes 411 A.14 Functional Methods 411 Bibliography 412 Index 415