The book is a gentle introduction to Python using arithmetic, and vice versa, with a historical perspective encompassing programming languages within the wider process of development of mathematical notation. The revisitation of typical algorithms that are the core of elementary mathematical knowledge helps to grasp their essence and to clarify some assumptions that are often taken for granted but are very profound and of a very general nature.

The first mathematician to define a systematic system for generating numbers was Archimedes of Syracuse in the third century B.C. The...