In this chapter, we will give a brief overview of the principal syntactical elements of Python. Readers who have just started learning programming are guided through the book in this chapter. Every topic is presented here in a how-to way and will be explained later in the book in a deeper conceptual manner and will also be enriched with many applications and extensions.

Readers who are already familiar with another programming language will come across, in this chapter, the Python way of doing classical language constructs. It offers them a quick start to Python programming.

Both types of readers are encouraged to take this chapter as a brief guideline when zigzagging through the book. However, before we start we have to make sure that everything is in place and you have the correct version of Python installed together with the main modules for Scientific Computing and tools, such as a good editor and a shell, which helps in code developing and testing.

Read the following section, even if you already have access to a computer with Python installed. You might want to adjust things to have a working environment conforming to the presentation in this book.