.. _book.nonprogrammer:

###############################
Building Skills in Programming
###############################

How do you learn to solve your own programs by writing programs?
By doing a series of exercises, each of which builds up a part of the skill set we
call "computer programming".

You'll need to read this book when you have the following three things happening at the same time:

-   You have a problem to solve that involves data and processing.
-   You know that the common desktop tools (word processors, spread sheets, databases, organizers, graphics) won't really help. You've found that they require too much manual pointing and clicking, or they don't do the right kinds of processing on your data.
-   You're ready to invest some of your own time to learn the Python language to solve your problem.

Or, perhaps you are tinkerer who likes to know how things really work. For many people, a computer is just an appliance. You may not find this satisfactory, and you want to know more. People who tinker with computers are called hackers, and you are about to join their ranks.

Our objective is to get you, a non-programming newbie, up and running. When you're done with this book, you'll be ready to move on to a more advanced Python book. For example, a book about the Python libraries. You can use these libraries can help you build high-quality software with a minimum of work.

This book has 20 chapters that
will help you build basic programming skills.
Each chapter introduces just a few new concepts
and includes a series of exercises to make those skills concrete.

The 3.2 edition iBook is a substantial rewrite of the previous 2.6 version.

Donations
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Building Skills in Programming 3.2 Edition
===========================================

http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/programming-for-absolute-beginners/14110212

Building Skills in Programming 2.6 Edition
===========================================

This is out of date.

`Chunked HTML <http://buildingskills.itmaybeahack.com/book/programming-2.6/html/index.html>`_ -- the book broken down into parts and chapters.

`Complete PDF <http://buildingskills.itmaybeahack.com/book/programming-2.6/latex/ProgrammingforNon-Programmers.pdf>`_ -- the entire book in a single PDF file.  Size of 2.8M

..  image::  nonprog/images/Cover_32.JPG
    :alt: Programming for Non-Programmers
    :target: nonprog/html/index.html

..  include:: footer.inc

:revised: |today|