Category: Python

  • Save time — and 30% — with my 25 Python, Git, and data science courses!

    It’s that time of year — Black Friday, when everything goes on sale. At my online store, with more than 25 courses about Python, data science, Git, and regular expressions, I’m giving 30% off of the usual price. Here’s what some students have said about my courses: “This is by far the most amazing Python course I…

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  • Stop fearing Python decorators

    If I mention “decorators,” even if you’ve been programming with Python for a while, what comes to mind? To many, decorators are mysterious and powerful — and beyond the reach of mere mortals. Their @ signs pop up in all sorts of places, from “pytest” to Flask to properties… but it’s not really clear what…

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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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