Informatics 42 • Winter 2012 • David G. Kay• UC Irvine

Supplementary References

Each of these references supplements the course material in some way. They're not required unless we say otherwise. If you'd like to suggest additions to this page, please feel free.

• Python textbooks:
  • Introduction to Computing Using Python: An Application Development Focus, by Ljubomir Perkovic (Wiley)
  • Python for Software Design: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, Python 3.2 version, by Allen B. Downey (Cambridge)
  • A reference for the Tkinter GUI programming library is available at python.org.
  • There's a large selection of Python learning materials on the python.org site; an overview page has links to pages for relative novices and for the more experienced. If you use any of these materials, let us know how they worked for you.

• Python practice problems:
  • codingbat.com/python provides dozens of simple practice programming problems, categorized by type. Enter your solution and it will test it for you.

• Python interpreter software can be downloaded. There are also IDEs to automate some tasks:
  
  • IDLE is the simple Python IDE that comes with the software installation. It will be our default tool.
  • Eclipse: This is a popular open-source professional development environment, particularly in the Java community. Its PyDev package configures it for Python. Eclipse does a lot; it's very complex; it's highly configurable.
    
  • PyCharm and Wing are commerial alternatives.

• Shorter documents about various aspects of our course
  
  • Pair Programming Illuminated, by Laurie Williams and Robert Kessler. This book describes the practices and advantages of pair programming.
  • Joel on Software has a brief and well-written article on functional programming in JavaScript, leading to a description of Google's MapReduce.
    
  • Caring for Your Wrists, by TidBITS Publishing. A two-page poster with good advice on avoiding repetitive stress injuries.
    
  • Typographic Design for Computerized Text, by David G. Kay. Two pages on the basic principles of typographic readability.
  • A BNF grammar of Scheme is part of the formal syntax section of the official Scheme definition (The Revised^5 Report on Scheme).
  • A grammar of Python is also available. No surprise—it's a lot longer.

• Comparing programming languages: An eclectic list of informal references.
  • Programs in over 1000 different languages to print the "99 Bottles of Beer" song
  • Brief information on 2500 languages
  • History of Programming Languages site based on the foregoing.

• The Informatics faculty has compiled a far-ranging list of books