Category: Python
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Variables are pronouns: A simple metaphor for Python newbies
I teach about 10 different courses to companies around the world, but my favorite remains “Python for non-programmers.” Participants in this course are typically network and system administrators, support engineers, and managers who want to learn some programming skills, but don’t see themselves as programmers. Moreover, many of them took a programming course back when…
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Sharpen your Python skills with Weekly Python Exercise
It’s time for another cohort of Weekly Python Exercise! This time, it’s an advanced cohort with 15 weeks of practice in such subjects as functional programming, object-oriented programming, iterators, generators, and decorators. Early-bird pricing ends in just one week, on June 18th! Learn more, and get a sample, at https://WeeklyPythonExercise.com/.
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Registration (and early-bird pricing) is open for Weekly Python Exercise
Do you use Python, but sometimes feel stuck? Do you visit Stack Overflow every time you want to solve a problem? Do you wish that you understood how to use advanced techniques, such as generators and decorators, better? If so, then good news: I’m opening a new cohort of Weekly Python Exercise, specifically aimed at…
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Python dicts and memory usage
Bottom line: Use sys.getsizeof to measure a dict’s memory: an empty dictionary takes 240 bytes, because it starts with eight slots ready for key-value pairs. That number reflects the structure, not the data, so it stays at 240 no matter how big your values are, growing in jumps only as you add more pairs. Let’s…
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Weekly Python Exercise A2 (functions + modules for beginners) closes today
If you are a relative beginner to Python, and want to improve your understanding of functions and modules, then there’s no better way to do so than practice. Weekly Python Exercise provides you with that practice, with a family of six 15-week courses. In each course, you get a question on Tuesday, the answer on…
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“Python Workout” is Manning’s Deal of the Day!
If you’ve just finished a Python course or book, then you might feel a bit nervous about your Python knowledge. You might be wondering how you can become a master Python developer, solving problems without turning to Stack Overflow every few minutes. The good news is that you can improve! But getting better at Python…
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My interview on the “Talk Python” podcast
I was delighted to appear on the popular “Talk Python to Me” podcast, run by Michael Kennedy. In the podcast, I talk about teaching, learning, and teaching Python to companies. If you’re interested in how to learn better or teach better, then I think you’ll enjoy this episode! The episode is here: https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/210/making-the-most-out-of-in-person-training
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Making your Python decorators even better, with functool.wraps
Summary: Decorate your inner wrapper function with @wraps(func), imported from functools, and the decorated function keeps its original name, docstring, and signature. Without it, help() and name report “wrapper” and a generic (*args, **kwargs) signature. It’s one line of code, and I recommend adding it to every decorator you write. The good news: I gave…
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Get code + slides from my “Practical Decorators” talk from Euro Python / PyCon 2019
I presented my “Practical Decorators” talk twice this year — once at PyCon 2019 in Cleveland, and again at EuroPython 2019 in Basel. Here is the video of my presentation in Cleveland: If you want to get the PDF of my slides, as well as the Python code that I showed, then just enter your…