Blog
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Let’s de-confuse Python objects!
Are you confused about object-oriented Python? You’re not alone. In teaching Python to companies around the world for more than 20 years, I’ve found that almost everyone is confused by Python objects: Newcomers to object-oriented programming are just plain ol’ confused — by the terminology, the syntax, and why we even need to use objects.…
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Missing my blog posts? Check me out on YouTube!
I haven’t been posting much to this blog of late, in part because I’ve been posting Python-related videos on YouTube. Just in the last month or two, I’ve posted: Scraping HTML with Pandas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR5ltEVe-qc Three ways to read CSV data into Python: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmmrQb7xRJU Removing pairs from a dict, based on the value: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZsAQHCGir4 Why do…
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Level up your Python skills with six new courses
Want to level up your Python skills, to solve more problems in less time, and with less code? Want to take advantage of the latest techniques in the Python world? Want to ensure that your code is as idiomatic as possible, so that whoever has to maintain it down the line (including you) will have…
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Improve your “pandas” skills with “Pandas Workout”
As you might know, I’ve been working lately on my new book, Pandas Workout, with 50 exercises to improve your fluency using the “pandas” library for data analysis. Well, I have exciting news: The book is now available as a MEAP, aka the “Manning Early Access Program.” This means that if you buy the book…
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Python parameters primer
Python makes it easy to write functions. For example, I can write: def hello(name): return f’Hello, {name}!’ I can then run the function with: hello(‘world’) which will then, not surprisingly, return the string ‘Hello, world’ Here’s a question that doesn’t come up much: How does Python assign the string argument ‘world’ to the parameter “name”?…
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It’s time to learn Python
I’m on a mission: I want to help people to do more in less time, and to have better careers. How? Using Python. If you’re reading this, then you might already be convinced that Python is both easy to learn and impressively powerful. And you hopefully benefit from this power, either in your day-to-day work…
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Write better Python functions!
Whether you’re a newcomer to Python or an old hand, you’re probably writing lots of functions — functions that perform calculations, functions that parse files, functions that check passwords, and functions that contact remote APIs. But in Python, functions are more than just verbs. They’re also nouns: They’re objects that we can store in data…
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One year of “Python for non-programmers”
In the spring of last year, as the coronavirus pandemic began, it was pretty clear that this would be the major event of our lives, and that a lot of people were going to be affected in big, terrible ways — beyond the issues related to the virus itself, and the injury it created. Schools…
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Reminder: Weekly Python Exercise B1 (advanced topics 1) starts on Tuesday!
If you’ve been using Python for a year or more, and want to sharpen your skills, then I have good news: A new cohort of Weekly Python Exercise starts this coming Tuesday. The course has a simple formula, but one that works: Every Tuesday, for the 15 weeks of the course, you get a question…
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You can, but should you? Combining some of Python’s more esoteric features
Note: As usual, readers of my blog (and my students) found a simpler and more elegant solution than I did… I knew that the boolean “or” operator returned the first “True” value it encountered, but I completely forgot that if it only encounters “False” values, it returns the final one. So there was a far…