Advance Praise for Head First Programming “Head First Programming does a great job teaching programming using an iterative process Add a little, explain a little, make the program a little better This is how programming works in the real world and Head First Programming makes use of that in a teaching forum I recommend this book to anyone who wants to start dabbling in programming but doesn’t know where to start I’d also recommend this book to anyone not necessarily new to programming, but curious about Python It’s a great intro to programming in general and programming Python specifically.” — Jeremy Jones, Coauthor of Python for Unix and Linux System Administration “David Griffiths and Paul Barry have crafted the latest gem in the Head First series Do you use a computer, but are tired of always using someone else’s software? Is there something you wish your computer would but wasn’t programmed for? In Head First Programming, you’ll learn how to write code and make your computer things your way.” — Bill Mietelski, Software Engineer “Head First Programming provides a unique approach to a complex subject The early chapters make excellent use of metaphors to introduce basic programming concepts used as a foundation for the rest of the book This book has everything, from web development to graphical user interfaces and game programming.” — Doug Hellmann, Senior Software Engineer, Racemi “A good introduction to programming using one of the best languages around, Head First Programming uses a unique combination of visuals, puzzles, and exercises to teach programming in a way that is approachable and fun.” — Ted Leung, Principal Software Engineer, Sun Microsystems Praise for other Head First books “Kathy and Bert’s Head First Java transforms the printed page into the closest thing to a GUI you’ve ever seen In a wry, hip manner, the authors make learning Java an engaging ‘what’re they gonna next?’ experience.” — Warren Keuffel, Software Development Magazine “Beyond the engaging style that drags you forward from know-nothing into exalted Java warrior status, Head First Java covers a huge amount of practical matters that other texts leave as the dreaded ‘exercise for the reader ’ It’s clever, wry, hip and practical—there aren’t a lot of textbooks that can make that claim and live up to it while also teaching you about object serialization and network launch protocols.” — Dr Dan Russell, Director of User Sciences and Experience Research IBM Almaden Research Center (and teaches Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University) “It’s fast, irreverent, fun, and engaging Be careful—you might actually learn something!” — Ken Arnold, former Senior Engineer at Sun Microsystems Coauthor (with James Gosling, creator of Java), The Java Programming Language “I feel like a thousand pounds of books have just been lifted off of my head.” — Ward Cunningham, inventor of the Wiki and founder of the Hillside Group “Just the right tone for the geeked-out, casual-cool guru coder in all of us The right reference for practical development strategies—gets my brain going without having to slog through a bunch of tired, stale professor-speak.” — Travis Kalanick, Founder of Scour and Red Swoosh Member of the MIT TR100 “There are books you buy, books you keep, books you keep on your desk, and thanks to O’Reilly and the Head First crew, there is the penultimate category, Head First books They’re the ones that are dog-eared, mangled, and carried everywhere Head First SQL is at the top of my stack Heck, even the PDF I have for review is tattered and torn.” — Bill Sawyer, ATG Curriculum Manager, Oracle “This book’s admirable clarity, humor and substantial doses of clever make it the sort of book that helps even non-programmers think well about problem-solving.” — Cory Doctorow, co-editor of Boing Boing Author, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town Praise for other Head First books “I received the book yesterday and started to read it and I couldn’t stop This is definitely très ‘cool.’ It is fun, but they cover a lot of ground and they are right to the point I’m really impressed.” — Erich Gamma, IBM Distinguished Engineer, and co-author of Design Patterns “One of the funniest and smartest books on software design I’ve ever read.” — Aaron LaBerge, VP Technology, ESPN.com “What used to be a long trial and error learning process has now been reduced neatly into an engaging paperback.” — Mike Davidson, CEO, Newsvine, Inc “Elegant design is at the core of every chapter here, each concept conveyed with equal doses of pragmatism and wit.” — Ken Goldstein, Executive Vice President, Disney Online “I ♥ Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML—it teaches you everything you need to learn in a ‘fun coated’ format.” — Sally Applin, UI Designer and Artist “Usually when reading through a book or article on design patterns, I’d have to occasionally stick myself in the eye with something just to make sure I was paying attention Not with this book Odd as it may sound, this book makes learning about design patterns fun “While other books on design patterns are saying ‘Buehler… Buehler… Buehler…’ this book is on the float belting out ‘Shake it up, baby!’” — Eric Wuehler “I literally love this book In fact, I kissed this book in front of my wife.” — Satish Kumar the index starting and stopping, 316–317 volume, adjusting, 336–345 WAV files for, 221, 223 source code (see code) starting substring, checking, 56 substrings of, 43–46, 48, 49 uppercase, converting to, 54, 56 web pages as, 49 spaces (see white space) StringVar() variable, 278, 280, 292 split() method, strings, 121–124, 144, 161–162, 175 strip() method, strings, 56 SQL, 170 (see also database) substrings, 48 length of, 49 searching for, in strings, 52–58 specifying, 43–46, 49 square brackets ([]) creating arrays, 132, 134 enclosing index of array, 132 enclosing index of string, 42 enclosing key for hash, 153 stack, 104 stack frame, 105, 111 Starbuzz Coffee example, 38–74, 78–110 coffee supplies, maintaining, 78–91 discount price, finding in HTML, 50–59 health club discounts, calculating, 204–213 low price, checking for, 60–74 order messages, sending to Twitter, 92–110 price, extracting from HTML, 38–49 Surf-A-Thon example, 114–143, 146–174 highest score, calculating, 114–125 names, matching to scores, 142–143, 146–157 score data, extracting from database, 169–174 score data, extracting from formatted file, 160–167 scores, sorting, 136–141, 158–159 three highest scores, calculating, 126–135 T startswith() method, strings, 56 tabs in code, 22 Stellman, Andrew (Head First C#), 388 testing, automated, 389 storage of data, 129–130 text (see strings) storeroom example, 294–310 text boxes, 248 strings, 41–42, 48, 75 ending substring, checking, 56 formatting, 180–184, 186, 214 lowercase, converting to, 56 methods for, 55–56 offset value (index) of, 42 removing white space from, 56 replacing substrings in, 56 searching for substrings in, 52–58 splitting at spaces, 121–124 splitting at specified character, 161–162 Text() widget, 261, 269, 292 creating, 266–267 methods for, 263 third-party libraries (packages), 220, 223 threads, 394 time() function, time library, 70 time library, 68–73 timezone() function, time library, 70 Tk() app, 234, 255 you are here 4 405 the index tkinter library, 233–236, 238, 255, 341 view, 277 (see also widgets) toggle switch (see Checkbutton() widget) visual toggle (see Checkbutton() widget) transaction file, 179–184, 188–191 volume, adjusting, 336–345 true value, 14 try statement, 298–300, 311 Twitter, sending messages to, 93–98, 101 W TypeError message, 63–64 wait_finish() function, 221, 223 types (see datatypes) WAV files, 221, 223 TVN example, 169–174 (see also game show example) web pages, as strings, 49 U Unicode character encoding system, 394 unittest module, 389 upper() method, strings, 54, 56 uppercase, converting strings to, 54 urllib.request library, 69 urlopen() function, 49 V ValueError message, 119–120 variables, 4, 35 collections of (see data structures) control variables, 278 global variables, 108–109, 244 local variables, 105, 106, 111 scope of, 104–108, 111 vi editor, 395 406 Index West, Dave (Head First Object-Oriented Analysis & Design), 392 while loop, 29–33, 61–65 white space in code, 22 removing from strings, 56 specifying in format strings, 182 splitting strings at, 121–124 widgets Button() widget, 234–236, 239–244, 245, 255 choosing, 341 compared to objects, 368 for data entry (see data entry widgets) event loop for, 255 Frame() widget, 364, 373, 383 grouping, 363–364 Label() widget, 248–253, 255 list of, 248 positioning, 235–238 Window Manager, 348 Window Manager events, 319–324, 326–327 WM_DELETE_WINDOW message, 322 WM_SAVE_YOURSELF message, 322 WM_TAKE_FOCUS message, 322 ... for Head First Programming ? ?Head First Programming does a great job teaching programming using an iterative process Add a little, explain a little, make the program a little better This is how programming... thanks to O’Reilly and the Head First crew, there is the penultimate category, Head First books They’re the ones that are dog-eared, mangled, and carried everywhere Head First SQL is at the top... interfaces and game programming.” — Doug Hellmann, Senior Software Engineer, Racemi “A good introduction to programming using one of the best languages around, Head First Programming uses a unique