Blog
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Reminder: Early-bird pricing for Weekly Python Exercise ends tomorrow
This is just a quick reminder that if you want to join the advanced cohort of Weekly Python Exercise starting July 2nd, you should do it by tomorrow (Tuesday, June 18th). Don’t miss this opportunity to improve your Python coding skills! We’ll be talking about iterators, generators, decorators, threads, and functional programming, and helping you…
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Playing with Python strings, lists, and variable names — or, a complex answer to a simple question
I recently received a question from a reader of my “Better developers” list. He asks: Is there any way to turn a str type into a list type? For example, I have a list of elements, and want to turn that element into a separate list. For example, if I have test = [‘a’, ‘b’,…
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“Python Workout” is Manning’s Deal of the Day!
I’m a firm believer in improving your Python fluency via practice, practice, and more practice. “Python Workout” is a collection of my 50 favorite exercises from my 20 years of on-site Python training at some of the world’s largest and best-known companies. I’m delighted to announce that “Python Workout,” my book with 50 exercises to…
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Variables are pronouns: A simple metaphor for Python newbies
I teach about 10 different courses to companies around the world, but my favorite remains “Python for non-programmers.” Participants in this course are typically network and system administrators, support engineers, and managers who want to learn some programming skills, but don’t see themselves as programmers. Moreover, many of them took a programming course back when…
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Sharpen your Python skills with Weekly Python Exercise
It’s time for another cohort of Weekly Python Exercise! This time, it’s an advanced cohort with 15 weeks of practice in such subjects as functional programming, object-oriented programming, iterators, generators, and decorators. Early-bird pricing ends in just one week, on June 18th! Learn more, and get a sample, at https://WeeklyPythonExercise.com/.
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Why do Python lists let you += a tuple, when you can’t + a tuple?
Let’s say you have a list in Python: >>> mylist = [10, 20, 30] You want to add something to that list. The most standard way to do this is with the “append” method, which adds its argument to the end of the list: >>> mylist.append(40) >>> print(mylist) [10, 20, 30, 40] But what if…
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Registration (and early-bird pricing) is open for Weekly Python Exercise
Do you use Python, but sometimes feel stuck? Do you visit Stack Overflow every time you want to solve a problem? Do you wish that you understood how to use advanced techniques, such as generators and decorators, better? If so, then good news: I’m opening a new cohort of Weekly Python Exercise, specifically aimed at…
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Python dicts and memory usage
Let’s say that we create a new, empty Python dictionary: >>> d = {} How much memory does this new, empty dict consume? We can find out with “sys.getsizeof“: >>> import sys>>> sys.getsizeof(d)240 In other words, our dictionary, with nothing in it at all, consumes 240 bytes. Not bad; given how often dictionaries are used…
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Weekly Python Exercise A2 (functions + modules for beginners) closes today
If you are a relative beginner to Python, and want to improve your understanding of functions and modules, then there’s no better way to do so than practice. Weekly Python Exercise provides you with that practice, with a family of six 15-week courses. In each course, you get a question on Tuesday, the answer on…
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“Python Workout” is Manning’s Deal of the Day!
If you’ve just finished a Python course or book, then you might feel a bit nervous about your Python knowledge. You might be wondering how you can become a master Python developer, solving problems without turning to Stack Overflow every few minutes. The good news is that you can improve! But getting better at Python…