Python for Non-Programmers

If you've never programmed before, the tutorials on this page are recommended for you; they don't assume that you have previous experience. If you have programming experience, also check out the BeginnersGuide/Programmers page.

Books

Each of these books can be purchased online but is also available as free textual, website, or video content.

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• Automate the Boring Stuff with Python - Practical Programming for Total Beginners by Al Sweigart is "written for office workers, students, administrators, and anyone who uses a computer to learn how to code small, practical programs to automate tasks on their computer." ||website ||print version ||

• How To Think Like a Computer Scientist is a classic open-source book by Allen Downey with contributions from Jeffrey Elkner and Chris Meyers. It was updated to Python 3 by Peter Wentworth. ||website ||print version ||

• Making Games with Python & Pygame by Al Sweigart introduces the Pygame framework for novices and intermediate programmers to make graphical games. ||website ||print version ||

• Python One-Liners by Christian Mayer teaches you how to read and write "one-liners": concise statements of useful functionality packed into a single line of code. ||website with free one-liner explainer videos ||print version ||

• Think Python by Allen B. Downey teaches you how to think like a computer scientist. ||website ||print version ||

You can find many free Python books online. For example, check out this article with 101 free Python books.

Interactive Courses

These sites give you instant feedback on programming problems that you can solve in your browser.

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• CheckiO is a gamified website containing programming tasks that can be solved in Python 3.

• Codecademy (Python)

• Code the blocks combines Python programming with a 3D environment where you "place blocks" and construct structures. It also comes with Python tutorials that teach you how to create progressively elaborate 3D structures.

• Computer Science Circles has 30 lessons, 100 exercises, and a message system where you can ask for help. Teachers can use it with their students. It is also available in Dutch, French, German, and Lithuanian.

• DataCamp Python Tutorial Unlike most other Python tutorials, this 4 hour tutorial by DataCamp focuses on Python specifically for Data Science. It has 57 interactive exercises and 11 videos.

• Finxter - How good are your Python skills? Test and Training with >300 hand-picked Python puzzles.

• HackInScience - 50+ Python exercises on a free, adless, simple, and open-source platform.

• How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Interactive Edition is an interactive reimagination of Elkner, Downey and Meyer's book with visualizations and audio explanations.

Resources for Younger Learners

(This section was previously called "K-12 Oriented", K-12 being a USA-centric term which refers to the primary and secondary educational stages; through level 3 on the UNESCO ISCED education levels list.)

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• Build a "Pypet" Learn programming fundamentals in Python while building a Tamagotchi style "Pypet" by Tatiana Tylosky.

• Guido van Robot A teaching tool in which students write simple programs using a Python-like language to control a simulated robot. Field-tested at Yorktown High School, the project includes a lesson plan.

• Python for Kids by Jason R Briggs. Book with sample code and puzzles.

• PythonTurtle A learning environment for Python suitable for beginners and children, inspired by Logo. Geared mainly towards children, but known to be successful with adults as well.

• Young Coders tutorial This is the full text of the tutorial taught annually at PyCon (North America), with examples and exercises throughout. This tutorial starts with basic skills and builds to working with complex logic and games. Appropriate for ages 10 and up, including adult beginners.

• Webucator's self-paced Python 3 course free for homeschoolers and other students (use HOMESCHOOL as the coupon code when checking out). This course is appropriate for students 13 and up. From our experience, these students can learn at least as quickly as adults new to programming.

Tutorials and Websites

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• A Byte of Python, by Swaroop C.H., is also an introductory text for people with no previous programming experience.

• Ask Python Absolute Beginners Python Tutorial

• Beginner-friendly Python tutorial, that starts with the absolute basics and explains the Python language in an easy to understand way

• Hands-on Python Tutorial Beginners' Python, graphics, and simple client/server introduction, with videos

• Learning to Program An introduction to programming for those who have never programmed before, by Alan Gauld. It introduces several programming languages but has a strong emphasis on Python. (Python 2 and 3)

• After Hours Programming Python 3 Tutorial

• Letsfindcourse - Python: Best Python tutorials and courses recommended by experts.

• The Wikibooks Non-Programmer's Tutorial for Python by Josh Cogliati

• Learn Python An Introductory yet in-depth tutorial for Python beginners.

• Learning to Program by Alan Gauld

• The Python tips blog includes Python tips and tutorials for beginners and professional programmers.

• Python Tutorial in Python's documentation set. It's not written with non-programmers in mind, but it will give you an idea of the language's flavor and style.

• The Python-Course.eu's extensive tutorial for complete beginners, with lots of illustrations.

• Pythonspot Tutorials Python tutorials.

• The Python Guru A beginner-friendly guide for aspiring programmers.

• CodersLegacy A website + blog geared towards both new and experienced programmers. Mainly focused on teaching Python.

• The Codezine A python programming blog built for beginners.

Tutorial Aggregators / lists

• Gitconnected Python tutorials submitted and ranked by Python developers with the best rising to the top

• Coursesity - Python - Curated list of the best python courses and tutorials for beginners.

• Classpert - Python - A large collection of free and paid Python online courses, from a wide range of providers.

• Hackr.io - Python: Programming community-recommended best Python tutorials and courses

Tutorials for Scientific Audiences

please keep this list alphabetized These websites are written in support of science courses but are general enough that anyone can learn from them.

• Beginning Python for Bioinformatics by Patrick O'Brien. An introduction to Python aimed at biologists that introduces the PyCrust shell and Python's basic data types.

• Python for Number Theory is a series of Python notebooks (for Jupyter) for applications to number theory and cryptography. They assume no prior programming experience and are suitable for someone learning elementary number theory at the same time. They conclude with an introduction to primality testing and cryptography (Diffie-Hellman, RSA).

• Python for biologists

Apps

• Programiz App to Learn Python - A beginner-friendly app on Android and iOS to learn Python step by step with an in-built interpreter and quizzes.

Videos

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• Python Programming Tutorials for Beginners: Installation, IDE, variables, functions, strings, lists, OOP

• The Young Programmers Podcast contains video lessons on Python, Pygame, Jython, Scratch, Alice, Java, and Scala (somewhat outdated content!)

Email Academies

Python courses in your INBOX - please add only free resources

• Finxter Email Computer Science Academy: 20+ free Python and computer science courses delivered in email video lessons. Content: cheat sheets, Python basics, data structures, NumPy, data science, career advancement, coding productivity, and machine learning.

Tools

• Thonny, Python IDE for beginners

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