Includes index.CD-ROM contains: source code for all samples and programs in the book, the software necessary to install Python, Ruby, or Lua, and open-source libraries and utilities including Pythonwin, Distutils, Numeric Python and Paws.
Title"; "Copyright"; "Dedication"; "Acknowledgments"; "About the Author"; "Contents at a Glance"; "Contents"; "Introduction"; "What's in This Book?"; "Why Learn Another Language?"; "What's on the CD-ROM?"; "PART ONE Introducing High-Level Languages"; "CHAPTER 1 High-Level Language Overview"; "High-Level Language Roots"; "How Programming Languages Work"; "Low-Level Languages"; "Today's High-Level Languages"; "Interpreted versus Compiled Languages"; "Scripting Languages"; "The Pros of High-Level Languages"; "Cons of High-Level Languages" "A Brief History of Structured Programming""Introducing Python"; "Python Features"; "Introducing Lua"; "Lua Features"; "Introducing Ruby"; "Ruby Features"; "Summary"; "Questions and Answers"; "Exercises"; "CHAPTER 2 Python, Lua, and Ruby Language Features"; "Syntactical Similarities of Python, Lua, and Ruby"; "Comments and Commenting"; "Math and Algebraic Functions"; "Boolean Logic"; "Variables"; "Lists and Strings"; "Arrays"; "Program Structure"; "Linear Control Statements"; "Conditional Control Statements"; "Iterative Control Statements" "The for Loop""The while Loop"; "Miscellaneous Similarities"; "End-of-Line Characters"; "OOP Structure"; "Function Calls"; "Hello World Samples"; "The Python Environment"; "Installing Python"; "Running the Python Interpreter"; "Creating Python Program Files "; "Python's "Hello World" "; "C's "Hello World""; "The Lua Environment"; "Installing Lua"; "The Lua Interpreter"; "Creating Lua Program Files"; "Lua's "Hello World""; "The Ruby Environment"; "Installing Ruby"; "The Ruby Interpreter"; "Creating Ruby Program Files"; "Executing Ruby" "Ruby's "Hello World"""Summary"; "Questions and Answers"; "Exercises"; "PART TWO Programming with Python"; "CHAPTER 3 Getting Started with Python"; "Python Executables"; "Packaging Python Code"; "Freeze"; "ActiveState"; "py2exe"; "Python Debuggers"; "PythonWin"; "The Open Source HAP Debugger"; "Python Language Structure"; "Python Punctuation"; "Language Types"; "Numbers"; "Strings"; "Lists"; "Tuples"; "Dictionaries"; "Identifiers "; "Control Structures"; "Loops"; "Modules"; "Libraries"; "Creating a Simple User Interface in Python" "A Simple GUI with Tkinter""Memory, Performance, and Speed"; "The Garbage Collector"; "Pool Allocators"; "Performance and Speed"; "Summary"; "Questions and Answers"; "Exercises"; "CHAPTER 4 Getting Specific with Python Games"; "The Pygame Library"; "Installing Pygame"; "Using Pygame"; "Importing Pygame"; "The Pygame Surface"; "Creating a Pygame Window"; "The Ever-Important rect()"; "The Event System"; "Drawing with Pygame"; "Blitting"; "Loading an Image with Pygame"; "Try/except Code Blocks"; "Displaying Text"; "A Pygame Game Loop"