Writings from the author of Automate the Boring Stuff.
Posted by Al Sweigart in programming
watch "git status" in one and watch "git log -oneline" in the other so you can get live feedback as you enter Git commands.
Posted by Al Sweigart in news
Information about how to sign up for my Python course on Udemy for free or at a discounted rate.
Posted by Al Sweigart in news
Posted by Al Sweigart in python
Posted by Al Sweigart in programming
5 Stars: An excellent project-based book for young readers who want to move beyond Scratch
Code This Game is an excellent book that teaches Python programming by guiding the reader through making a tower-defense game from scratch. This is a book that doesn't shy away from programming detail, but manages to remain fun and engaging. If you have a student or child who wants to move beyond MIT's Scratch programming tool and do "real" programming, this is a great book.
Posted by Al Sweigart in news
Posted by Al Sweigart in news
Here are all the new additions and updates in the second edition.
Posted by Al Sweigart in python
Posted by Al Sweigart in python
Posted by Al Sweigart in python
A recent post to Reddit sparked some comments, so I wanted to clarify: In Python, hashable objects must be immutable and mutable objects cannot be hashable. (With one exception.)
Posted by Al Sweigart in programming
Alternative Title: The Little Schemer Wears No Clothes
Perhaps a software engineer or MIT professor friend of yours recommended this book to you. “Oh, you want to learn how to code? You should read The Little Schemer,” they’ll say. Your friend means well, but is completely wrong to recommend this book.
Posted by Al Sweigart in python
Python's packaging ecosystem contains multitudes. It can be intimidating for new Python developers to try to crack into, especially given the rapid evolution of Python packaging. Writing a *helloworld.py* file and running it on your computer is simple, but getting it to run on someone else's computer (and doing this the "right" way) involves a tangle of terms, tools, and techniques. What are wheel files? What is distutils? Do I use distutils or easy_install or pip?
To get to the bottom of this myself, I've compiled a curriculum of PyCon talks, online documentation, and my own personal notes to finally get a complete handle on Python packaging.
Posted by Al Sweigart in python
Programming games are a games genre where instead of playing the game directly, players write bot programs to play the game autonomously. I've created a Zombie Dice simulator, allowing programmers to practice their skills while having fun making game-playing AIs. Zombie Dice bots can be simple or incredibly complex, and are great for a class exercise or an individual programming challenge.
Posted by Al Sweigart in python
This page has materials for folks taking my two-hour tutorial, A Beginner's Guide to Tackling Recursion at PyOhio 2018 or following its video recording.
Posted by Al Sweigart in python
The Zen of Python by Tim Peters are 20 guidelines for the design of the Python language. Your Python code doesn’t necessarily have to follow these guidelines, but they’re good to keep in mind. The Zen of Python is an Easter egg, or hidden joke, that appears if you run import this.
Posted by Al Sweigart in python
In Python, you can increase the value of a variable by 1 or reduce it by 1 using the augmented assignment operators. The code spam += 1 and spam -= 1 increments and decrements the numeric values in spam by 1, respectively.
Other languages such as C++ and Java have the ++ and -- operators for incrementing and decrementing variables. (The name of C++ itself reflects this; the name is a tongue-in-cheek joke that indicates it's an enhanced form of the C language.) Code in C++ and Java could have ++spam or spam++. Python wisely doesn't include these operators; they are notoriously susceptible to subtle bugs.
Posted by Al Sweigart in python
Before we can get a nuanced answer to "Are tuples mutable or immutable?", we need some background information.
Posted by Al Sweigart in programming
I often get emails say little more than "Why doesn't my program work?" Often I can't answer them; either I don't have enough information about your problem or you're asking me about something I don't know anything about.
Posted by Al Sweigart in teaching
This post contains the lessons I've learned and my process for creating video tutorials, and I hope others who want to do the same find it useful. While this post is specific to Udemy and programming courses, the same lessons probably apply to all online courses.
Posted by Al Sweigart in django
Django is a web app framework for Python (similar to Rails for Ruby). It implements common web app features so you don't have to write that code. Dreamhost is a web host that offers cheap but reliable web servers. Their shared hosting plan is $11 a month, and provides more than enough disk space and bandwidth for personal sites.