Recursion Is Not A Superpower: An Iterative Ackermann
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
This post has the Python code for the infamously recursive Ackermann function, but without using recursion.
ccwd - A Copy Current Working Directory Command
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
The source code and compiled binary for a Windows terminal command I created to copy the current working directory to the clipboard. I find myself using this all the time.
Algorithmic Art with the BitFieldDraw Module
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
I created the bitfielddraw Python module so that you could turn math formulas into .png image files.
Book Review: The Charisma Machine by Morgan G. Ames
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
The Charisma Machine by Morgan G. Ames is the cautionary tale everyone in tech should read. Five stars.
Combinations and Permutations in Python with itertools
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
Explores the difference between combinations and permutations, and why you don't need to write your own Python code for them because the built-in
itertools module already exists. Includes working code examples.
New Book: The Big Book of Small Python Projects
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
My new book, The Big Book of Small Python Projects, is now available from No Starch Press. It's free to read online under a Creative Commons license. This book contains 81 small but complete programming projects written in Python. These projects are designed to help new programmers who have learned the basics see what real programs "look like". These aren't code snippets, but actual, full programs that you can run. At the same time, they are small enough so that their source code is easy to understand.
Al Sweigart's PyTennessee 2020 Opening Keynote
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
In March 2020, just before the lockdowns would begin, I gave the opening keynote at PyTennessee 2020. Unfortunately, it wasn't recorded. But I still have the script I used and so I re-recorded the talk. I've posted it to my YouTube channel.
Calm Programming Video Series
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
I've started a new video series of me silently coding a small game project from scratch. The Calm Programming series are meant to be coding videos that you can watch while playing the music of your choice. They aren't quite the same as tutorials: they don't have screen capture and aren't narrated, though you can turn on captions for some explanations.
Text Recognition in Python with pytesseract
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
Extracting text as string values from images is called optical character recognition (OCR) or simply text recognition. This blog post tells you how to run the Tesseract OCR engine from Python. Includes working code examples.
A Quick Pip Guide: How to Install Python Modules
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
This tutorial teaches you about Pip, a package manager that installs third-party packages for Python.