I was one of those kids in the 90s who taught themselves how to code by making video games in the BASIC programming language. Later, I majored in computer science, moved to Silicon Valley, became a software engineer, started writing programming books including Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, and then quit my job to write full-time. I now wake up whenever I want and work from home or nearby cafes. I'm financially secure while being my own boss.

This is a completely true story.^*

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Here are 22 actual, runnable Python code for several recursive functions, written in a style to be understandable by beginners and produce debuggable output.

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Generators in Python (also called generator functions) are used to create a series of values one at a time. Let's learn how they work by re-creating the built-in range() function.

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This post has the Python code for the infamously recursive Ackermann function, but without using recursion.

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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.

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I created the bitfielddraw Python module so that you could turn math formulas into .png image files.

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The Charisma Machine by Morgan G. Ames is the cautionary tale everyone in tech should read. Five stars.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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