welcome

Thank you for purchasing the MEAP for Learn AI-Assisted Python Programming.

We’re at the start of a new era in programming. AI coding assistants are here—ChatGPT, Copilot, and others—and they’re transforming how people program. The two of us have spent our careers researching and enhancing student learning of programming. We have never been more excited about the possibilities that AI coding assistants bring for the beginner or would-be programmer.

In this book, we fully embrace these tools and use them to offer an alternative way to learn how to write software. We believe that new learners of Python shouldn’t be spending time learning low-level details that are now mostly solved by the AI coding assistants. Instead, we believe that these tools empower you to write larger and more powerful software faster.

This book is for those who are interested in learning how to write software with Python or for the many people who tried and failed (we get it!) to learn how to write Python code in the traditional way. No prior programming skills are required, but we expect you to be comfortable with installing software and managing files.

We’ve organized the book to get you started writing software with Copilot right from the start. Then we teach you the essential skills that you need to program with Copilot effectively: code reading, problem decomposition, and testing. After that, we’ll bring all the skills together to write small software projects in meaningful domains.