1. Introduction

Programming Foundations aims to provide you with the basic knowledge and skills of working with computers and Python in particular. You can think of the content you will learn here as a toolbox which you will later be able to apply in your courses, your research, and perhaps even in your future job. This book is designed to begin from the very basics, i.e., it is designed for students with no prior experience in programming. If you do have some prior knowledge, you may be able to go though (parts of) this book at a faster pace, or choose to focus on more challenging exercises (level ** and ***).

Fig. 1.1 Art by Mark van Huystee.