Introduction to Computing and Programming in Python

Social Computing and Programming with Python Introduction to Computing and Programming in Python is a uniquely researched and up-to-date volume that is widely recognized for its successful introduction to the subject of Media Computation. Emphasizing creativity, classroom interaction, and in-class programming examples, Introduction to Computing and Programming in Python takes a bold and unique approach to computation that engages students and applies the subject matter to the relevancy of digital media. The Fourth Edition teaches students to program in an effort to communicate via social computing outlets, providing a unique approach that serves the interests of a broad range of students.

Table of Contents:
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 9 1.4 Media Computation: Why Digitize Media? 11 1.5 Computer Science for Everyone 13 1.5.1 It’s About Communication 13 1.5.2 It’s About Process 13 1.5.3 You Will Probably Need It 14 2 Introduction to Programming 18 2.1 Programming Is About Naming 18 2.2 Programming in Python 21 2.3 Programming in JES 22 2.4 Media Computation in JES 23 2.1.1 Files and Their Names 20 2.5 Making a Program 33 2.4.1 Showing a Picture 27 2.4.2 Playing a Sound 30 2.4.3 Naming Values 30 2.5.1 Variable Recipes: Real Math-Like Functions That Take Input 37 3 Creating and Modifying Text 44 3.1 Strings: Making Strings 44 3.2 Taking Strings Apart with For 49 3.1.1 Making Strings from Strings: Telling Stories 46 3.2.1 Testing the Pieces 51 3.2.2 Taking String Apart, and Putting Strings Together 54 3.2.3 Taking Strings Apart with Indices 57 3.2.4 Mirroring, Reversing, and Separating Strings with Index 59 3.2.5 Encoding and Decoding Strings Using a Keyword Cipher 61 3.3 Taking Strings Apart by Words 63 3.4 What’s Inside a String 66 3.5 What a Computer Can Do 67 4 Modifying Pictures Using Loops 74 4.1 How Pictures Are Encoded 75 4.2 Manipulating Pictures 80 4.3 Changing Color Values 86 4.2.1 Exploring Pictures 84 4.3.1 Using Loops in Pictures 86 4.3.2 Increasing/Decreasing Red (Green, Blue) 88 4.3.3 Testing the Program: Did That Really Work? 93 4.3.4 Changing One Color at a Time 94 4.4.1 Making Sense of Functions 95 4.4 Creating a Sunset 95 4.5 Lightening and Darkening 100 4.6 Creating a Negative 101 4.7 Converting to Grayscale 102 4.8 Specifying Pixels by Index 104 5 Picture Techniques with Selection 114 5.1 Replacing Colors: Red-Eye, Sepia Tones, and Posterizing 114 5.1.1 Reducing Red-Eye 118 5.1.2 Sepia-Toned and Posterized Pictures: Using Conditionals to Choose the Color 120 5.2 Comparing Pixels: Edge Detection 126 5.3 Background Subtraction 129 5.4 Chromakey 132 5.5 Coloring in ranges 137 5.5.1 Adding a Border 137 5.5.2 Lightening the Right Half of a Picture 138 5.6 Selecting without Retesting 139 6 Modifying Pixels by Position 145 6.1 Processing Pixels Faster 145 6.1.1 Looping across the Pixels with Range 147 6.1.2 Writing Faster Pixel Loops 149 6.2 Mirroring a Picture 151 6.3 Copying and Transforming Pictures 158 6.3.1 Copying 159 6.3.2 Copying Smaller and Modifying 165 6.3.3 Copying and Referencing 167 6.3.4 Creating a Collage 169 6.3.5 General Copying 172 6.3.6 Rotation 173 6.3.7 Scaling 176 6.4 Combining Pixels: Blurring 181 6.5 Blending Pictures 184 6.6 Drawing on Images 186 6.7 Programs as Specifying Drawing Process 191 6.6.1 Drawing with Drawing Commands 188 6.6.2 Vector and Bitmap Representations 189 6.7.1 Why Do We Write Programs? 192 Sounds 201 7 Modifying Sounds Using Loops 203 7.1 How Sound Is Encoded 203 7.2 Manipulating Sounds 215 7.3 Changing the Volume of Sounds 220 7.1.1 The Physics of Sound 203 7.1.2 Investigating Different Sounds 206 7.1.3 Encoding the Sound 211 7.1.4 Binary Numbers and Two’s Complement 212 7.1.5 Storing Digitized Sounds 213 7.2.1 Open Sounds and Manipulating Samples 215 7.2.2 Using the JES MediaTools 218 7.2.3 Looping 219 7.3.1 Increasing Volume 220 7.3.2 Did That Really Work? 221 7.3.3 Decreasing Volume 225 7.3.4 Using Array Index Notation 226 7.3.5 Making Sense of Functions in Sounds 227 7.4.1 Generating Clipping 229 7.4 Normalizing Sounds 227 8 Modifying Samples in a Range 235 8.1 Manipulating Different Sections of the Sound Differently 235 8.2 Splicing Sounds 238 8.3 General Clip and Copy 245 8.4 Reversing Sounds 247 8.5 Mirroring 249 8.6 On Functions and Scope 249 9 Making Sounds by Combining Pieces 255 9.1 Composing Sounds Through Addition 255 9.2 Blending Sounds 256 9.3 Creating an Echo 258 8.1.1 Revisiting Index Array Notation 236 9.4 How Sampling Keyboards Work 261 9.5 Additive Synthesis 265 9.6 Modern Music Synthesis 273 9.3.1 Creating Multiple Echoes 259 9.3.2 Creating Chords 260 9.4.1 Sampling as an Algorithm 265 9.5.1 Making Sine Waves 265 9.5.2 Adding Sine Waves Together 267 9.5.3 Checking Our Result 268 9.5.4 Square Waves 269 9.5.5 Triangular Waves 272 9.6.1 MP3 274 9.6.2 MIDI 274 10 Building Bigger Programs 279 10.1 Designing Programs Top-Down 280 10.1.1 A Top-Down Design Example 281 10.1.2 Designing the Top-Level Function 282 10.2 Designing Programs Bottom-Up 288 10.3 Testing Your Program 290 10.4 Tips on Debugging 292 10.1.3 Writing the Subfunctions 285 10.2.1 An Example Bottom-Up Process 289 10.3.1 Testing the Edge Conditions 291 10.4.1 Finding Which Statement to Worry About 293 10.4.2 Seeing the Variables 293 10.4.3 Debugging the Adventure Game 296 10.5 Algorithms and Design 299 10.6 Connecting to Data outside a Function 299 10.7 Running Programs Outside of JES 303 11 Manipulating Text with Methods and Files 310 11.1 Text as Unimedia 310 11.2 Manipulating Parts of Strings 311 11.3 Files: Places to Put Your Strings and Other Stuff 317 11.4 The Python Standard Library 327 11.2.1 String Methods: Introducing Objects and Dot Notation 312 11.2.2 Lists: Powerful, Structured Text 314 11.2.3 Strings Have No Font 316 11.3.1 Opening and Manipulating Files 318 11.3.2 Generating Form Letters 320 11.3.3 Reading and Manipulating Data from the Internet 321 11.3.4 Scraping Information from a Web Page 323 11.3.5 Reading CSV Data 324 11.3.6 Writing Out Programs 326 11.4.1 More on Import and Your Own Modules 328 11.4.2 Adding Unpredictably toYour Program with Random 329 11.4.3 Reading CSV Files with a Library 331 11.4.4 A Sampling of Python Standard Libraries 331 12 Advanced Text Techniques: Web and Information 337 12.1 Networks: Getting Our Text from the Web 337 12.1.1 Automating Access to CSV Data 341 12.1.2 Accessing FTP 343 12.2 Using Text to Shift Between Media 344 12.3 Moving Information Between Media 347 12.4 Using Lists as Structured Text for Media Representations 349 12.5 Hiding Information in a Picture 351 12.5.1 Hiding a Sound Inside a Picture 353 13 Making Text for the Web 359 13.1 HTML: The Notation of the Web 359 13.2 Writing Programs to Generate HTML 364 13.3 Databases: A Place to Store Our Text 369 13.2.1 Making Home Pages 366 13.3.1 Relational Databases 371 13.3.2 An Example Relational Database Using HashTables 372 13.3.3 Working with SQL 375 13.3.4 Using a Database to Build Web Pages 377 14 Creating and Modifying Movies 382 14.1 Generating Animations 383 14.2 Working with Video Source 392 14.3 Building a Video Effect Bottom-Up 396 15 Speed 403 15.1 Focusing on Computer Science 403 15.2 What Makes Programs Fast? 403 14.2.1 Video Manipulating Examples 392 15.3 What Makes a Computer Fast? 417 15.2.1 What Computers Really Understand 404 15.2.2 Compilers and Interpreters 405 15.2.3 What Limits Computer Speed? 409 15.2.4 Does It Really Make a Difference? 411 15.2.5 Making Searching Faster 413 15.2.6 AlgorithmsThat Never Finish or Can’t BeWritten 415 15.2.7 Why Is Photoshop Faster than JES? 417 15.3.1 Clock Rates and Actual Computation 417 15.3.2 Storage: What Makes a Computer Slow? 419 15.3.3 Display 420 16 Functional Programming 423 16.1 Using Functions to Make Programming Easier 423 16.2 Functional Programming with Map and Reduce 427 16.3 Functional Programming for Media 430 16.4 Recursion: A Powerful Idea 432 16.3.1 Media Manipulation Without Changing State 431 16.4.1 Recursive Directory Traversals 438 16.4.2 Recursive Media Functions 440 17 Object Oriented Programming 444 17.1 History of Objects 444 17.2 Working with Turtles 446 17.3 Teaching Turtles New Tricks 451 17.2.1 Classes and Objects 446 17.2.2 Sending Messages to Objects 447 17.2.3 Objects Control Their State 449 17.3.1 Overriding an Existing Turtle Method 453 17.3.2 Working with Multiple Turtles at Once 454 17.3.3 Turtles with Pictures 456 17.3.4 Dancing Turtles 458 17.3.5 Recursion and Turtles 460 17.4.1 Making the Slide Class More Object-Oriented 465 17.4 An Object-Oriented Slide Show 461 17.5 Object-Oriented Media 466 17.6 Joe the Box 471 17.7 Why Objects? 473 Bibliography 480

About the Author :
Mark Guzdial is a professor in the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is one of the founders of the ACM’s International Computing Education Research workshop series. Dr. Guzdial’s research focuses on learning sciences and technology, specifically, computing education research. His first books were on the programming language Squeak and its use in education. He was the original developer of “Swiki” (Squeak Wiki), the first wikideveloped explicitly for use in schools. Mark has published several books on the use of media as a context for learning computing, which have influenced undergraduate computing curricula around the world. He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Learning Sciences and Communications of the ACM. He was a recipient of the 2012 IEEE Computer Society Undergraduate Teaching Award. He is a Senior Member of the ACM. Barbara Ericson is a research scientist and the director of Computing Outreach for the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. She has been working on improving introductory computing education since 2004. She has served as the teacher education representative on the Computer Science Teachers Association board, the co-chair of the K-12 Alliance for the National Center for Women in Information Technology, and as a reader for the Advanced Placement Computer Science exams. She enjoys the diversity of the types of problems she has worked on over the years in computing including computer graphics, artificial intelligence, medicine, and object-oriented programming. Mark and Barbara received the 2010 ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Award for Outstanding Computer Educator for their work on Media Computation including this book. They led a project called “Georgia Computes!” for six years, which had a significant impact in improving computing education in the US state of Georgia [3]. Together, they Mark and Barbara are leaders in the Expanding Computing Education.