Python: Beginner to Expert
Although it may not appear that way at first because of how well Python objects are integrated into the language, Python is a highly object-oriented language. We won’t stop to prove that yet, but we will toward the end of the article. Instead, because this article focuses on the needs of beginning software developers, we … Read more
Since Python is a very accessible language, many developers learn it as a first language. If you’re new to programming and Python, you may be working to gain confidence in the language. At the same time, you’re ramping up on basic programming skills. While finding your footing, you may also be wondering if you made … Read more
Other than data science and machine learning, I believe the one use case driving the popularity of Python in recent years has been its suitability for serverless cloud computing. Especially for junior developers interested in a role as a Software Developer or DevOps Engineer, I would argue that learning about serverless computing represents a huge … Read more
Most Python developers know about dictionaries, lists, and tuples — three workhorse collections that are so useful that they repeatedly appear in Python code. Compared to other languages, these essential collections have such excellent support in the language that they feel almost like native types. For example, they all have special constructors and operators unique … Read more
Developers make all sorts of mistakes. We wouldn’t have debuggers, QA engineers, code review, automated unit testing, and the rest if we were perfect. One mistake many developers make early in their career is applying the label “Junior Developer” to themselves. Move over, “heartbreak of psoriasis”. For real beginner pain, nothing tops the heartbreak of … Read more
Pandas is a hugely popular tool for data analysis and machine learning. It builds on the strengths and speed of Numpy to allow for mixed column types in a two-dimensional DataFrame that is indexable by column or row. As popular as it is, Pandas offers so many different ways to do things that it helps … Read more
Pip and Conda are two of the most common tools that Python developers use to install third-party libraries. Pip is a tool that’s tightly integrated with modern versions of Python, while conda is a separate tool that provides additional functionality. In this article, we introduce both tools and compare them. We also give basic usage … Read more
Working with spreadsheets in Python on your local machine is relatively simple. For example, Pandas can open a spreadsheet into a DataFrame using read_excel. To do this, Pandas relies on another package for reading and writing spreadsheets, openpyxl. Once you’ve installed this package using your favorite package manager, the process is straightforward. To the extent … Read more
Jupyter Notebook is a popular development environment that supports Python and other programming languages. It is a browser-based environment, which is excellent since you can connect to notebooks running either online or locally. Our goal in this article is two-fold and reflects the article’s division into two parts: Part One: Up and Running Running Online … Read more
Many Python developers consider generators an advanced topic because they are less well known than sequence types such as lists, arrays, and strings. Also, because the syntax for generator functions can appear strange at first, many developers don’t take the time to learn about them at all. That’s a shame, really, because, in some instances, … Read more
