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The Big Book of Small Python Projects: 81 Easy Practice Programs Kindle Edition
If you’ve mastered basic Python syntax and you’re ready to start writing programs, you’ll find The Big Book of Small Python Projects both enlightening and fun. This collection of 81 Python projects will have you making digital art, games, animations, counting pro- grams, and more right away. Once you see how the code works, you’ll practice re-creating the programs and experiment by adding your own custom touches.
These simple, text-based programs are 256 lines of code or less. And whether it’s a vintage screensaver, a snail-racing game, a clickbait headline generator, or animated strands of DNA, each project is designed to be self-contained so you can easily share it online.
You’ll create:
• Hangman, Blackjack, and other games to play against your friends or the computer
• Simulations of a forest fire, a million dice rolls, and a Japanese abacus
• Animations like a virtual fish tank, a rotating cube, and a bouncing DVD logo screensaver
• A first-person 3D maze game
• Encryption programs that use ciphers like ROT13 and Vigenère to conceal text
If you’re tired of standard step-by-step tutorials, you’ll love the learn-by-doing approach of The Big Book of Small Python Projects. It’s proof that good things come in small programs!
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherNo Starch Press
- Publication dateJune 29, 2021
- File size2.3 MB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
—Naomi Ceder, Fellow of the Python Software Foundation
"Al Sweigart presents fun programs, inspiring learners to tweak them. That's how I learned to program: tinkering with examples from books and magazines. It works!"
–Luciano Ramalho, Technical Principal at ThoughtWorks and author of Fluent Python
"Whether you're new to Python or want to exercise your coding brain, I recommend The Big Book of Small Python Projects to spark your thinking. Both the 'big' and the 'small' in the title are accurate. There are a lot of projects in this book, but most code takes up only a page or two. That makes it a fun reference book to get you into the flow or kick off a session in your terminal."
—Adam DuVander, Founder, EveryDeveloper
"This book is excellent for beginners to Python and a great reference book for programmers who are well versed in programming. I'm happy to give this book 5 out of 5 stars!"
—Greg Walters, Full Circle Magazine
"This book is packed with fun and easy programs, I can confirm."
—BC Gain, @bcamerongain
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B08FH9FV7M
- Publisher : No Starch Press
- Accessibility : Learn more
- Publication date : June 29, 2021
- Language : English
- File size : 2.3 MB
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Not Enabled
- Print length : 418 pages
- ISBN-13 : 978-1718501256
- Page Flip : Enabled
- Best Sellers Rank: #177,199 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #11 in Open Source Programming
- #13 in Object Oriented Design
- #31 in Python Computer Programming
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Al Sweigart is a software developer and tech book author living in Houston. He has written several programming books for beginners, including Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. His books are freely available under a Creative Commons license at his website https://inventwithpython.com.
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The Big Lab Guide of Small Group Learning Activities.
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2025Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseI use this book in my HS Python course as a project based approach to fundamental techniques. The kids love the projects and learned a ton! They were way ahead of the rest of the AP classes.
- Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2024Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseVery good beginners book for learning Python while building projects
- Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2023Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseThe book is a collection of easy to understand algorithms design to teach the reader how to use python to solve everyday problems. It would be an excellent way to learn this language by working through the examples given, I have bough t a couple of books by this author and he does an excellent job of writing a text book. His books are written as if they were college text books.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2024Format: PaperbackVerified Purchasethis is a collection of very simple python projects.
good to give you some ideas to start with to design more interesting coding puzzles.
All projects are text based even the ones with titles suggesting a graphical component.
just basic python with very limited use of additional libraries.
a good collection for beginners to wet your toes.
- Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2026Format: PaperbackBy the time I ran across this book, I had already been through a couple of beginner Python books/crash courses. Those made me good at understanding and troubleshooting code but not creating it. I feel like this book is an excellent way to bridge that gap. The projects are easy enough that I was able to complete most of them without having to copy or even refer to the source code in the book. I felt this was useful as I could compare my solutions with the book's and refactor and optimize for better solutions. Most of the projects are snack-sized and easy to complete on a quick break. Some mornings I even managed to write 2 or 3 on my iPhone while I was on the train.
By the end of the book, I was already thinking about expanded abilities I'd like to add to the created modules as well as new ways to incorporate them into other projects. I can't recommend this book enough as a great step in your Python journey (NOTE: I recommend any of Mr. Sweigart's books for anyone who wants to enrich their lives with Python) .
- Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2026Format: PaperbackI have a couple of Al Sweigart's other books and I've found a lot of value in them. I used one of the projects in Automate the Boring Stuff with Python as a jumping off place at work and was able to craft an application that replaced about 10 hours a week of, boring, manual work. I started the program, checked back in about 1/2 hour when the program had run, spent 20 minutes investigating and reporting the results and I was done.
This was great but I ran into a wall. In order to build on the success I'd had, I needed to learn more python. There was just one problem, reading and working exercises in a programming book bores me to tears. I like to jump right into making things and teach myself as I try to accomplish a task. This book is great for that. I like working puzzles and the exercises in this book are fun puzzles for me to solve. I have fun and I learn python. How can you beat that? I highly recommend all Sweigart's books, but this is my favorite.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2025Format: PaperbackIn the age of AI and vibe-coding is this book relevant? Absolutely, yes! Without being able to understand what code AI is writing and how it structures a program, you can't know what it is doing.
This book gives you practice in reading - and if you use it as the author intends - writing programs so that you begin to understand not just how they work from a language point of view, but how they are structured. This will make you a better programmer no matter whether you program from scratch, adapt other people's code or use vibe coding.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2021Format: PaperbackAcquiring programming skills is a difficult task because it has to do directly with the way we think about things, and also because it has many layers of specialization and depth. But it is particularly difficult in the first steps, where you want to turn a set of abstract concepts into solutions to concrete problems. For many, this transition is frustrating because most of the content in the education system is about memorization and repetition. The Big Book of Small Python Projects seeks to help fill that gap for people who are just starting to program by providing examples of small but large enough programs to generate a sense of accomplishment.
This is the latest book by Al Sweigart, an author who enjoys great popularity and recognition, on his website inventwithpython.com you can find a good number of books ranging from a book that invites us to learn programming by developing simple video games "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" which is already in its fourth edition, to a book of best practices for professionals "Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python". One of his books "Automate Boring Stuff with Python", which has sold around 300 thousand copies on Amazon, is one of those books that anyone would think that someone should have written before, but no one had dared to do it, here we are guided on the basic tasks to work with resources that are common to almost everyone: working on the file system, manipulating office documents, and interacting with Internet resources.
Sweigart's formula is consistent and effective: we start by reviewing the solution to the problem, which invites us to think about how everything must work behind the scenes, and then he shows us in greater or lesser detail how this solution was constructed. It is obvious that he is not the inventor of this method nor is he the only one who has used it in programming, other good examples are the books "Dive into Python" by Mark Pilgrim where a similar formula is applied with great success.
In "The Big Book" this methodology is applied systematically throughout 81 programs ordered alphabetically, following a brief introduction we find three sections: "The Program in Action" where the author shows an example of program execution, then in "How It Works" he shows us the source code just mentioning implementation details, and "Exploring the Program" where he asks some questions to encourage the reader to deepen the understanding of the program or in some cases, extend it. Most probably the author's intention is not that we advance sequentially from beginning to end, but that among the large number of topics we work on those that call our attention, in this sense it is very useful Appendix A: "Tag Index" where he shows us a classification of the programs based on two systems: by length, and by characteristics.
The result is not a book that intends to explain how Python works, or how programs are built, this has already been done by Sweigart in his previous books, especially in "Invent Your Own Computer Games". "The Big Book of Small Python Projects" should be understood more as a guide to lab experiments where you are given directions on an activity that you should do yourself, or perhaps ideally in a group with friends or work/study colleagues. In this sense, it would not be unreasonable for me to see a Wiki or a GitHub repository where people could post observations or variants of the programs.
Personally, I have very much enjoyed all his books, and have recommended them all at one time or another. And I am also too close to his pedagogical approach that I have largely incorporated into my work as a teacher to offer an objective viewpoint. There are some implementation details that are not to my liking, such as the use of lowerCamelCase for naming variables, functions and methods, which contradicts the PEP8 that most use, or the preferential use of the format method rather than f-strings, but there is an open invitation here for everyone to adjust it to their liking. Beyond any captious remarks, I recommend this book without reservation, not only for individual reading but also as a basis for various collective activities. For example, as a source of ideas for a programming club or a programming camp, as complementary material for a professional training process, and even as inspiration to study other programming languages, I personally have been using it to study Scala.
5.0 out of 5 starsAcquiring programming skills is a difficult task because it has to do directly with the way we think about things, and also because it has many layers of specialization and depth. But it is particularly difficult in the first steps, where you want to turn a set of abstract concepts into solutions to concrete problems. For many, this transition is frustrating because most of the content in the education system is about memorization and repetition. The Big Book of Small Python Projects seeks to help fill that gap for people who are just starting to program by providing examples of small but large enough programs to generate a sense of accomplishment.The Big Lab Guide of Small Group Learning Activities.
Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2021
This is the latest book by Al Sweigart, an author who enjoys great popularity and recognition, on his website inventwithpython.com you can find a good number of books ranging from a book that invites us to learn programming by developing simple video games "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" which is already in its fourth edition, to a book of best practices for professionals "Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python". One of his books "Automate Boring Stuff with Python", which has sold around 300 thousand copies on Amazon, is one of those books that anyone would think that someone should have written before, but no one had dared to do it, here we are guided on the basic tasks to work with resources that are common to almost everyone: working on the file system, manipulating office documents, and interacting with Internet resources.
Sweigart's formula is consistent and effective: we start by reviewing the solution to the problem, which invites us to think about how everything must work behind the scenes, and then he shows us in greater or lesser detail how this solution was constructed. It is obvious that he is not the inventor of this method nor is he the only one who has used it in programming, other good examples are the books "Dive into Python" by Mark Pilgrim where a similar formula is applied with great success.
In "The Big Book" this methodology is applied systematically throughout 81 programs ordered alphabetically, following a brief introduction we find three sections: "The Program in Action" where the author shows an example of program execution, then in "How It Works" he shows us the source code just mentioning implementation details, and "Exploring the Program" where he asks some questions to encourage the reader to deepen the understanding of the program or in some cases, extend it. Most probably the author's intention is not that we advance sequentially from beginning to end, but that among the large number of topics we work on those that call our attention, in this sense it is very useful Appendix A: "Tag Index" where he shows us a classification of the programs based on two systems: by length, and by characteristics.
The result is not a book that intends to explain how Python works, or how programs are built, this has already been done by Sweigart in his previous books, especially in "Invent Your Own Computer Games". "The Big Book of Small Python Projects" should be understood more as a guide to lab experiments where you are given directions on an activity that you should do yourself, or perhaps ideally in a group with friends or work/study colleagues. In this sense, it would not be unreasonable for me to see a Wiki or a GitHub repository where people could post observations or variants of the programs.
Personally, I have very much enjoyed all his books, and have recommended them all at one time or another. And I am also too close to his pedagogical approach that I have largely incorporated into my work as a teacher to offer an objective viewpoint. There are some implementation details that are not to my liking, such as the use of lowerCamelCase for naming variables, functions and methods, which contradicts the PEP8 that most use, or the preferential use of the format method rather than f-strings, but there is an open invitation here for everyone to adjust it to their liking. Beyond any captious remarks, I recommend this book without reservation, not only for individual reading but also as a basis for various collective activities. For example, as a source of ideas for a programming club or a programming camp, as complementary material for a professional training process, and even as inspiration to study other programming languages, I personally have been using it to study Scala.
Images in this review
Top reviews from other countries
GabrielReviewed in Japan on August 7, 20242.0 out of 5 stars Nice
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseGood for kids. The print quality is good.
Good for kids. The print quality is good.2.0 out of 5 stars
GabrielNice
Reviewed in Japan on August 7, 2024
Images in this review
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Smart AleckReviewed in Turkey on February 7, 20245.0 out of 5 stars Çok güzel bir kitap.Tavsiye ederim.
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseGayet güzel baskı ve rahat okunabilir punto. İçinde pek çok örnek var işinize yarayacağını düşündüğüm. Tavsiye ederim. Faydalı bir kitap mutlaka alın derim. Her zaman elinizin altında bulunsun.
UsmanReviewed in Germany on October 7, 20212.0 out of 5 stars Project code doesnt work
Format: KindleVerified PurchaseSo I typed in all the code from the book into the IDE, ran the code but the projects don’t run as intended.
Don’t waste your money on this crap.
DAVE DYSONReviewed in the United Kingdom on November 9, 20252.0 out of 5 stars Disappointingly dry—didn’t spark my coding curiosity
Format: KindleVerified PurchaseI really wanted this book to reignite my interest in Python, but it fell flat. The projects felt more like mechanical exercises than creative challenges, and I found myself losing motivation rather than gaining momentum.
While the layout is clean and the code examples are technically sound, the overall tone lacked energy or inspiration. It’s great if you’re looking for bite-sized tasks to practice syntax, but if you're hoping for engaging, real-world applications or a sense of progression, this might not be the book for you.
I gave it two stars because it’s well-organized and might suit absolute beginners—but for me, it didn’t deliver the spark I was hoping for.































