This book focuses on introducing programming techniques and developing good habits. To that end, our approach avoids some of the more esoteric features of Python and concentrates on the programming basics that transfer directly to other imperative programming languages. Its easygoing approach is ideal, no matter what your background. The approach starts with simple algorithmic code and then scales into working with functions, objects, and classes as the problems become more complex and require new abstraction mechanisms. Rather than working only with numeric or text-based applications like other introductory texts, this edition presents graphics, image manipulation, GUIs, and simple networked client/server applications. This book has three objectives: 1. To develop the ability to correctly analyze a variety of problems and generate appropriate algorithmic solutions 2. To explore the syntax and usage of the Python programming language as a means of accomplishing the first objective 3. To examine the software development environment and associated tools.