This week we have the honor of welcoming Mark Lutz as our PyDev of the Week. Mark is the author of the first Python book ever, Programming Python. He has also authored Learning Python and the Python Pocket Reference, all three of which were with O’Reilly publishing. Rather than rehash more of his background, let’s […]
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This week we welcome Nicole Harris (@nlhkabu) as our PyDev of the Week! Nicole is the lead designer of Warehouse, the replacement for the Python Packaging Index (PyPI). You can see a demo version of the site here. She is also working with O’Reilly publishing on a Django screencast, which you’ll hear more about below.
PyDev of the Week: Nicole Harris Read More »
Python provides a great module for creating your own iterators. The module I am referring to is itertools. The tools provided by itertools are fast and memory efficient. You will be able to take these building blocks to create your own specialized iterators that can be used for efficient looping. In this chapter, we will
Python 201: An Intro to itertools Read More »
This week we welcome Peter Damoc as our PyDev of the Week! I first came across some of Peter’s work in the wxPython source code. Let’s spend some time getting to know him better! Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc): I’m 39 and I’m the oldest of five. I have
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According to the Python documentation, deques “are a generalization of stacks and queues”. They are pronounced “deck” which is short for “double-ended queue”. They are a replacement container for the Python list. Deques are thread-safe and support memory efficient appends and pops from either side of the deque. A list is optimized for fast fixed-length
Python 201 – What’s a deque? Read More »
I have decided to offer a pre-order of the paperback version of my next book. You will be able to pre-order a signed copy of the book which will ship in September, 2016. I am limiting the number of pre-orders to 100. If you’re interested in getting the book, you can do so here
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This week we welcome John Cook as our PyDev of the Week! John has a fun Python blog that I read from to time and he graciously accepted my offer of interviewing him this week. Let’s take a few moments to get to know him better. Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies,
PyDev of the Week: John Cook Read More »
We are entering the last few days for the Kickstarter Campaign for my second book, Python 201. Since we’re almost to our stretch goal, I have added new chapters to the book. In addition to what was already covered, the book will also cover the following topics: Python’s super() descriptors (magic methods) Scope (local, global
Python 201 Kickstarter Update – The End is Nigh! Read More »
This week we welcome Thomas Robitaille (@astrofrog) as our PyDev of the Week! Thomas is the lead developer of the Glue data exploration package and one of the lead developers of the Astropy project, which is a Python library for Astronomy. He also writes a fun Python blog. Let’s take a few moments to get
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My artist got back to me today with a mostly done cover that I wanted to share with you all: We have 8 days left in the campaign and we’re almost to our stretch goal! Be sure to tell your friends that now’s the best time to show support for this fun book! You can
Python 201 Kickstarter Update #3 – Cover Almost Done! Read More »
A ChainMap is a class from the collections module that provides the ability to link multiple mappings together such that they end up being a single unit. If you look at the documentation, you will notice that it accepts *maps, which means that a ChainMap will accept any number of mappings or dictionaries and turn
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This week we welcome Ezio Melotti as our PyDev of the Week! Ezio is a core developer of the Python language. You can get an idea of what he’s been up to via his bitbucket page. Let’s take a few moments to get to know him! Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies,
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Python’s collections module has another great subclass of dict known as OrderedDict. As the name implies, this dictionary keeps track of the order of the keys as they are added. If you create a regular dict, you will note that it is an unordered data collection: >>> d = {‘banana’: 3, ‘apple’:4, ‘pear’: 1, ‘orange’:
Python 201 – OrderedDict Read More »
We’re halfway through the Kickstarter campaign for my new book, Python 201 and we’re a little over halfway to my first stretch goal. If you know anyone who would like to add to their Python skills, be sure to post a link to the campaign to your social website(s) of choice. I also added a
Python 201 Kickstarter Campaign Update – New Cover Preview Read More »
The collections module has another handy tool called defaultdict. The defaultdict is a subclass of Python’s dict that accepts a default_factory as its primary argument. The default_factory is usually a Python type, such as int or list, but you can also use a function or a lambda too. Let’s start by creating a regular Python
Python 201 – The handy defaultdict Read More »