Göktürk Üçoluk received his [...]. and [...]. degrees in Physics from Bosphorus University, Istanbul, Turkey, and his Ph.D. degree from Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey, in 1980, 1982, and 1989, respectively. He is the developer of several symbolic computation software, among which are the first freeware Standard Lisp interpreter and the cross compiler. He is currently a full professor at the Department of Computer Engineering at METU. His recent interests are in evolutionary computing, modeling and simulation. His other research interests include symbolic algebraic computing, language processors, and natural language processing. Along with lectures in his subject field, he also taught over 20 years the freshman CS courses.

Sinan Kalkan is a professor at the Department of Computer Engineering at Middle East Technical University (METU), Turkey. He received his [...]. degree in Computer Eng. from METU, and his Ph.D. degree in Informatics from the Uni. of Göttingen, Germany. After working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Uni. of Göttingen and at METU, he joined METU Dept. of Computer Engineering in 2010 as a faculty member and since then, has been working on several computer vision and robotics problems. His research was supported by the BAGEP Award of the Science Academy, Turkey in 2020. His work on context modeling received the 2019 Outstanding Paper Award from IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems. He has co-organized several conferences and workshops on computer vision and robotics. With Dr. Üçoluk, he has written a book on Introduction to programming concepts with case studies in Python, published by Springer in 2012. He serves as a member for the IEEE Journal on Robotics and Automation Letters journals, METU Image Processing Center and TÜB¿TAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey).

Onur Tolga ¿ehitölu is an instructor atthe Department of Computer Engineering at Middle East Technical University (METU), Turkey. He received his [...]. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Engineering from METU. He joined METU Computer Engineering in 2002 as instructor and since then he has been working on evolutionary algorithms, automated design, computer and network security fields. In addition to various other CS courses, he has taught courses on programming and programming language concepts for 20 years.

This book is needed because Python is becoming the language through which freshman computer science and engineering students are introduced to the concepts of programming and computer science

This book is a timely and strong alternative to the existing textbooks

This book introduces concepts by starting with the Q/A 'WHY'? and proceeds by the Q/A 'HOW'?. Most other books start with the Q/A 'WHAT'? which is then followed by a 'HOW'?

The CS content of this book is not hijacked by a programming language

Includes supplementary material: [...]

Includes supplementary material: [...]

The World of Programming.- Programming Languages.- Programming Paradigms.- The Zoo of Programming Languages.- How Programming Languages are Implemented.- How a Program gets "written".- Meet Python.- Further Reading.- Exercises.- Data: The First Ingredient of a Program.- What is Data?.- What is Structured Data?.- Basic Data Types.- Basic Organization of Data: Containers.- Accessing Data or Containers by Names : Variables.- Further Reading.- Exercises.- Actions: the 2nd Ingredient of a Program.- Purpose and Scope of Actions.- Action Types.- Controlling Actions: Conditionals.- Reusable Actions: Functions.- Functional Programming Tools in Python.- Further Reading.- Exercises.- Managing the Size of a Problem.- An Action Wizard: Recursion.- Iteration.- Recursion versus Iteration.- Further Reading.- Exercises.- Complexity.- Time and Memory Complexity.- Further Reading.- Exercises.- Organizing Data.- Primitive and Composite Data Types.- Abstract Data Types.- Abstract Data Types in Python.- Further Reading.- Exercises.- Objects: Reunion of Data and Action.- The Idea behind the Object-Oriented Paradigm (OOP).- Properties of Object-Oriented Programming.- Object-Oriented Programming in Python.- Further Reading.