BOOK REVIEW

Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python
by Al Sweigart

This book is definitely appropriate for someone who is interested in learning python, who have not before. At this point, I can say I have not finished the book, but so far everything is explained right from the ground up; in an interesting style that does not really dumb down too much. The main thing that irked me just a little was the fact there were not any exercises after the lessons. The new information is presented in each chapter, but because their are no exercises, the material is not reinforced. I find learning python is one of those skills you learn by doing, meaning type every line of code out. Most beginner programmers tend to copy and paste the source code of each program after going through the explanation, rather than trying it out and that is usually it. In my opinion that is really not the best way to go about learning programming, I have tried that in the past, it does not work. Other than that, in terms of the actual language of Python, not all aspects of the language are described; only the parts that are absolutely necessary to know how to create games. The next book I get will probably be more about the language of python, however this is definitely a great first book to jump into the language with.