Python Without Fear

Python Without Fear

Praise for this book, Python Without Fear “This is really a great book. I wish I’d had it when I was learning Python.” –John M. Wargo, author of Apache Cordova 4 Programming Praise for the previous book in the series, C++ Without Fear “I’m in love with your C++ Without Fear book. It keeps me awake for hours during the night. Thanks to you, I got most of the idea in just a few hours.” –Laura Viral, graduate physics student at CERN and Istanbul, Turkey “It’s hard to tell where I began and ended with your book. I felt like I woke up and literally knew how to write C++ code. I can’t overstate the confidence you gave me.” – Danny Grady, senior programmer/analyst at a Fortune 500 Company Whether you’re new to programming or moving from another language, Python Without Fear will quickly make you productive! Brian Overland’s unique approach to Python includes: Taking you by the hand while teaching topics from the very basics to intermediate and advanced features of Python Teaching by examples that are explained line by line Heavy emphasis on examples that are fun and useful, including games, graphics, database applications, file storage, puzzles, and more! How to think “Pythonically” and avoid common “gotchas” Register your product at informit.com/register for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available.

Python Without Fear

Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python

BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN NOVICE AND PROFESSIONAL You've completed a basic Python programming tutorial or finished Al Sweigart's bestseller, Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. What's the next step toward becoming a capable, confident software developer? Welcome to Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python. More than a mere collection of advanced syntax and masterful tips for writing clean code, you'll learn how to advance your Python programming skills by using the command line and other professional tools like code formatters, type checkers, linters, and version control. Sweigart takes you through best practices for setting up your development environment, naming variables, and improving readability, then tackles documentation, organization and performance measurement, as well as object-oriented design and the Big-O algorithm analysis commonly used in coding interviews. The skills you learn will boost your ability to program--not just in Python but in any language. You'll learn: Coding style, and how to use Python's Black auto-formatting tool for cleaner code Common sources of bugs, and how to detect them with static analyzers How to structure the files in your code projects with the Cookiecutter template tool Functional programming techniques like lambda and higher-order functions How to profile the speed of your code with Python's built-in timeit and cProfile modules The computer science behind Big-O algorithm analysis How to make your comments and docstrings informative, and how often to write them How to create classes in object-oriented programming, and why they're used to organize code Toward the end of the book you'll read a detailed source-code breakdown of two classic command-line games, the Tower of Hanoi (a logic puzzle) and Four-in-a-Row (a two-player tile-dropping game), and a breakdown of how their code follows the book's best practices. You'll test your skills by implementing the program yourself. Of course, no single book can make you a professional software developer. But Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python will get you further down that path and make you a better programmer, as you learn to write readable code that's easy to debug and perfectly Pythonic Requirements: Covers Python 3.6 and higher