My Python 101 online course will be completely FREE for the next 48 hours on Educative’s website. Be sure to go get yourself a copy. It is based on my Python 101 book. When you get it from Educative, it will be yours to keep for life. Note that this is an interactive online course, […]
Python 101 Online Course is FREE for 48 Hours! Read More »
This week we welcome Paul Moore as our PyDev of the Week! Paul is a core developer of pip, the defacto method of installing packages in Python as well as a core developer of Python itself. You can get a glimpse of some of the projects that Paul is involved with on his Github profile.
PyDev of the Week: Paul Moore Read More »
Python comes with its own code editor: IDLE (Integreted Development and Learning Environment). There is some lore that the name for IDLE comes from Eric Idle, an actor in Monty Python. An IDE is an editor for programmers that provides color highlighting of key words in the language, auto-complete, an “experimental” debugger and lots of
Python 101 – An Intro to IDLE Read More »
Python has some powerful features that allow you to introspect your code or the code of others. I created the following video tutorial to help you learn how that works. This tutorial is from the Python 101 Screencast Related Articles Python 101: Introspection
Python 101 Screencast: Introspection Read More »
The Python programming language has several built-in types that it supports. One of my favorites is the dictionary. A dictionary is a mapping object maps hashable values to arbitrary objects (source). Other languages call dictionaries “hash tables”. They are mutable objects that you can change whenever you want to, unlike tuples. A dictionary’s keys must
Python 101: All About Dictionaries Read More »
Last week I was doing some Test Driven Development training and overheard someone mention another programming language that had a test runner that you could set up to watch your project directory and run your tests when the files changed. I thought that was a neat idea. I also thought I could easily write my
How to Run Python Tests “Continuously” While Coding Read More »
This week we welcome Luke Plant as our PyDev of the Week. Luke is one of the core developers of Django, a very popular Python web framework. Luke writes a blog with many articles about Django. If you’d like to see some of Luke’s contributions, then you will want to wander over to his Github
PyDev of the Week: Luke Plant Read More »
Last year I ran into a situation where I needed to know if a function had been called. Basically we were trying to prevent shutting down a Twisted event loop twice or starting two of them. Anyway, in my research I stumbled across a fun post on StackOverflow that showed a couple of ways to
Python – How to tell if a Function Has Been Called Read More »
My second book, Python 201: Intermediate Python, was just released as an online course over at Educative. I also have Python 101 on there as well. Educative is a pretty new educational website. It’s kind of like Code Academy except that they usually charge for access to all their courses. Note: This is NOT a
Python 201 is Now an Online Course Read More »
This week we welcome Dan Bader (@dbader_org) as our PyDev of the Week. Dan does a weekly Python Tricks newsletter / blog that’s a fun read. He has also authored a Python Tricks book. I always like checking out my interviewee’s Github page to see what they enjoy coding or writing about, so I encourage
PyDev of the Week: Dan Bader Read More »
People who are new to the Python programming language can get a bit confused about the difference between “==” (equality) and Python’s keyword “is” (identity). I have even seen experienced programmers who will find the difference subtle enough that they will introduce logic errors in their code do to a misunderstanding between the two. In
Python 101: Equality vs Identity Read More »
This week we welcome Victor Stinner as our PyDev of the Week! Victor is quite active in the Python community and is a core Python developer. You can see some of his contributions here. He is the author of eight accepted PEPs which you can also read about at the previous link. If you’re interested
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Python 3.5 added more support for Unpacking Generalizations in PEP 448. According to the PEP, it added extended usages of the * iterable unpacking operator and ** dictionary unpacking operators to allow unpacking in more positions, an arbitrary number of times, and in additional circumstances. What this means is that we can now make calls
Python 3 – Unpacking Generalizations Read More »
This week our PyDev of the Week is Petr Viktorin (@EnCuKou). Petr is the author of PEP 489 — Multi-phase extension module initialization and teaches Python for the local PyLadies in Czech Republic. You can some of what he’s up to via his Github page or on his website. Let’s take some time to get
PyDev of the Week: Petr Viktorin Read More »
Python 3.6 added a new module called secrets that is designed “to provide an obvious way to reliably generate cryptographically strong pseudo-random values suitable for managing secrets, such as account authentication, tokens, and similar”. Python’s random module was never designed for cryptographic use but for modeling and simulation. Of course, you could always use the
Python’s New secrets Module Read More »