There are under 2 days left in the book campaign! I think that’s pretty exciting. I hope you do too! I’ve been busy writing the new Part 3 lately. I only have two more chapters to go before it’s done. My hope is that Part 3 will be done by the end of the week. […]
Pyhon 101 Book Writing Update #2 Read More »
Python 3.4 released today (2014-03-17) and includes a lot of neat stuff. According to the Python Insider, these are the major changes / additions: PEP 428, a “pathlib” module providing object-oriented filesystem paths PEP 435, a standardized “enum” module PEP 436, a build enhancement that will help generate introspection information for builtins PEP 442, improved
Python 3.4 Released Today! Read More »
Python includes a couple of modules for testing in its standard library: doctest and unittest. We will be looking at doctest in this article. The doctest module will search for pieces of text in your code that resemble interactive Python sessions. It will then execute those sessions to verify that they work exactly as written.
Python Testing with doctest Read More »
Kivy is an open source Python library for rapid development of applications that make use of innovative user interfaces, such as multi-touch apps. The Kivy organization is organizing its second application development contest.! This is a great chance for new and experienced users to show off their skills and compete for prizes. Entries will be
Kivy App Contest 2014 Read More »
Over the weekend, I finished setting up a website for my upcoming book, Python 101. I discovered that www.python101.com is owned by squatters, so I got www.python101.org instead. It will redirect to http://python101.pythonlibrary.org because I think the book should be a part of Python Library while maintaining its independence. There isn’t much content on the
Python 101 Book Website Launched Read More »
We only have five more days before the end of the campaign, so I thought it would be nice to share a couple chapters from the book. You can download the introduction along with chapters 1 and 2 here. I have been working on the new section of the book since it is now the
Python 101 – Book Sample Read More »
The wxPython Google Group was discussing different methods of catching exceptions in wxPython the other day. If you use wxPython a lot, you will soon realize that some exceptions are difficult to catch. The wxPython Wiki explains why. Anyway, the fellows on the list were recommending the use of sys.excepthook. So I took one of
wxPython: Catching Exceptions from Anywhere Read More »
Python decorators are really cool, but they can be a little hard to understand at first. A decorator in Python is a function that accepts another function as an argument. The decorator will usually modify or enhance the function it accepted and return the modified function. This means that when you call a decorated function,
Python 201: Decorators Read More »
Reportlab is a very flexible PDF creation package for Python. You can layout your documents using absolute positioning or by using Flowable objects, such as a Paragraph, a Table or Frame. You can even mix the two together! In this article, we will be looking at how to create some custom Flowables. For example, what
Reportlab: How to Create Custom Flowables Read More »
There’s a Python book contest going on over on the Bite Sized Python Tips blog. You can get one of 3 copies of the book Tkinter GUI Application Development by Bhaskar Chaudhary. I reviewed this book late last year and found it be a really interesting book. I think it will give you lots of
eBook Giveaway – Tkinter GUI Application Development Read More »
The other day someone was asking a lot of questions on StackOverflow about how to work with wizards in wxPython. You can read the two original questions here and here. The code we’ll be looking at in this example is what I used to answer the questions on Stack. The primary question was how to
wxPython: How to Disable a Wizard’s Next Button Read More »
This is an update on the Kickstarter campaign I am running in support of my Python 101 book: We made it halfway through the campaign and I think we’re going to reach our first stretch goal! Speaking of stretch goals, I was thinking I should go ahead and announce a couple more. Stretch Goal #2:
Python 101 – We’re Halfway Through the Campaign! Read More »
It’s time for another update! I want to apologize for not writing sooner, but I’ve been without  internet for several days and I’m writing this from my phone. I just wanted to let you all know that I’m planning to finish part two this week. I’ve had some people ask if I plan to release
Python 101 – Writing Update Read More »
I had a lot of ideas for the cover of Python 101. My first idea was to go to the zoo and take some photographs of Pythons there, then pick the right one stick that on the cover. I have a lot of photo editing software, so I also considered taking the photo and changing
Python 101 Book: Behind the Scenes – The Cover Read More »
Python has a vast library of modules that are included with its distribution. The csv module gives the Python programmer the ability to parse CSV (Comma Separated Values) files. A CSV file is a human readable text file where each line has a number of fields, separated by commas or some other delimiter. You can
Python 101: Reading and Writing CSV Files Read More »