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There is no messing about with this book. The very first section (apart from the front matter) is entitled Algorithms and algorithmic thinking, by which it means what we would call “decomposition”. A couple of pages in and we are creating variables.

You can see just from this first paragraph that the book moves along at a brisk pace. This suits someone like me, I have to say: when I took a course in Python a few years ago I was so bored with the plodding pace of the class that I went ahead and started creating my own programs!

While the book is comprehensive, and gives instructions step by step, it is not what you might call an idiot’s guide. And while there are screenshots, and coloured box-outs, the text is small and dense. Nevertheless, it would be a good idea for teachers of Computing to buy this for their departmental library, and make it available to students who will find it useful and not be daunted by its appearance!