Learn Python the Hard Way

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Preface
	Improvements in the Fifth Edition
	Acknowledgments
MODULE 1 Getting Started in Python
	Exercise 0 Gearing Up
		General Instructions
		Minimalist Start
		Complete Instructions
		Testing Your Setup
		Learning the Command Line
		Next Steps
	Exercise 1 A Good First Program
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
		The Blue Plus
	Exercise 2 Comments and Pound Characters
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 3 Numbers and Math
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 4 Variables and Names
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 5 More Variables and Printing
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 6 Strings and Text
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Break It
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 7 Combining Strings
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Break It
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 8 Formatting Strings Manually
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 9 Multi-Line Strings
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 10 Escape Codes in Strings
		What You Should See
		Escape Sequences
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 11 Asking People Questions
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 12 An Easier Way to Prompt
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 13 Parameters, Unpacking, Variables
		If You Get Lost
		Code Description
		Hold Up! Features Have Another Name
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 14 Prompting and Passing
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 15 Reading Files
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 16 Reading and Writing Files
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 17 More Files
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
MODULE 2 The Basics of Programming
	Exercise 18 Names, Variables, Code, Functions
		Exercise Code
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 19 Functions and Variables
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 20 Functions and Files
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 21 Functions Can Return Something
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 22 Strings, Bytes, and Character Encodings
		Initial Research
		Switches, Conventions, and Encodings
		Dissecting the Output
		Dissecting the Code
		Encodings Deep Dive
		Breaking It
	Exercise 23 Introductory Lists
		Accessing Elements of a List
		Practicing Lists
		The Code
		The Challenge
			Fruit Challenge
			Cars Challenge
			Languages Challenge
		Final Challenge
	Exercise 24 Introductory Dictionaries
		Key/Value Structures
		Combining Lists with Data Objects
		The Code
		What You Should See
		The Challenge
			Fruit Challenge
			Cars Challenge
			Languages Challenge
		Final Challenge
	Exercise 25 Dictionaries and Functions
		Step 1: Function Names Are Variables
		Step 2: Dictionaries with Variables
		Step 3: Dictionaries with Functions
		Step 4: Deciphering the Last Line
		Study Drill
	Exercise 26 Dictionaries and Modules
		Step 1: Review of import
		Step 2: Find the __dict__
		Step 3: Change the __dict__
		Study Drill: Find the “Dunders”
	Exercise 27 The Five Simple Rules to the Game of Code
		Rule 1: Everything Is a Sequence of Instructions
			How can I get this output?
			Where are these bytes stored?
		Rule 2: Jumps Make the Sequence Non-Linear
			Why is this backward?
			Can a JUMP go forward?
		Rule 3: Tests Control Jumps
			What do you mean “pop”?
			Wait, aren’t tests like COMPARE_OP used in loops too?
		Rule 4: Storage Controls Tests
		Rule 5: Input/Output Controls Storage
		Putting It All Together
			The List of Byte Codes
			dis() Is a Side Quest
	Exercise 28 Memorizing Logic
		The Truth Terms
		The Truth Tables
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 29 Boolean Practice
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 30 What If
		What You Should See
		dis() It
		Study Drill
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 31 Else and If
		What You Should See
		dis() It
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 32 Making Decisions
		What You Should See
		dis() It
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 33 Loops and Lists
		What You Should See
		dis() It
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 34 While Loops
		What You Should See
		dis() It
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 35 Branches and Functions
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 36 Designing and Debugging
		From Idea to Working Code
			Is This a Professional Process?
			About the “X/Y” Non-Problem
		Rules for If-Statements
		Rules for Loops
		Tips for Debugging
		Homework
	Exercise 37 Symbol Review
		Keywords
		Data Types
		String Escape Sequences
		Old-Style String Formats
		Operators
		Reading Code
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
MODULE 3 Applying What You Know
	Exercise 38 Beyond Jupyter for Windows
		Why Learn PowerShell?
		What Is PowerShell?
			PowerShell versus Cmder
			Starting Jupyter
			Getting Help
			Where Are You with start?
			Going from Graphics to PowerShell
			Where Are You with pwd?
			What’s in Here?
			Files, Folders, Directories, and Paths
			Moving Around
			Relative Paths
			Creating and Destroying
			Flags and Arguments
			Copy and Move
			Environment Variables
			Running Code
			Common Key Sequences
			Useful Developer Commands
		Crash Landing
	Exercise 39 Beyond Jupyter for macOS/Linux
		macOS Troubles
		Why Learn Bash or ZSH?
		What Is Bash?
			Starting Jupyter
			Getting Help
			Where Are You with open?
			Going from Graphics to Bash
			Where Are You with pwd?
			What’s in Here?
			Files, Folders, Directories, and Paths
			Moving Around
			Relative Paths
			Creating and Destroying
			Hidden Files
			Flags and Arguments
			Copy and Move
			Environment Variables
			Running Code
			Common Key Sequences
			Useful Developer Commands
		Crash Landing
	Exercise 40 Advanced Developer Tools
		Managing conda Environments
		Adding conda-forge
		Using pip
		Using a .condarc
		General Editing Tips
		Going Further
	Exercise 41 A Project Skeleton
		Activate an Environment
		Just Use cookiecutter
		Building Your Project
		Installing Your Project
		Testing the Install
		Remove test-project
		Common Errors
		Study Drills
	Exercise 42 Doing Things to Lists
		What You Should See
		What Lists Can Do
		When to Use Lists
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 43 Doing Things to Dictionaries
		A Dictionary Example
		What You Should See
		What Dictionaries Can Do
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 44 From Dictionaries to Objects
		Step 1: Passing a Dict to a Function
			What You Should See
		Step 2: talk inside the Dict
		Step 3: Closures
			What You Should See
		Step 4: A Person Constructor
		Study Drills
	Exercise 45 Basic Object-Oriented Programming
		Python’s People
		Using dir() and __dict__
		About the Dot (.)
		Terminology
		A Word on self
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 46 Inheritance and Advanced OOP
		How This Looks in Code
		About class Name(object)
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 47 Basic Object-Oriented Analysis and Design
		The Analysis of a Simple Game Engine
			Write or Draw About the Problem
			Extract Key Concepts and Research Them
			Create a Class Hierarchy and Object Map for the Concepts
			Code the Classes and a Test to Run Them
			Repeat and Refine
		Top Down versus Bottom Up
		The Code for “Gothons from Planet Percal #25”
		What You Should See
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 48 Inheritance versus Composition
		What Is Inheritance?
			Implicit Inheritance
			Override Explicitly
			Alter Before or After
			All Three Combined
		The Reason for super()
			Using super() with __init__()
		Composition
		When to Use Inheritance or Composition
		Study Drill
		Common Student Questions
	Exercise 49 You Make a Game
		Evaluating Your Game
		Function Style
		Class Style
		Code Style
		Good Comments
		Evaluate Your Game
	Exercise 50 Automated Testing
		What Is the Purpose of Testing?
		How to Test Efficiently
		Install PyTest
		Simple PyTest Demo
		Running pytest
		Exceptions and try/except
		Getting Coverage Reports
		Study Drills
		Common Student Questions
MODULE 4 Python and Data Science
	Exercise 51 What Is Data Munging?
		Why Data Munging?
		The Problem
		The Setup
		How to Code
		Process Example
		Solution Strategies
		Awesome ETL Tools
		Study Drills
	Exercise 52 Scraping Data from the Web
		Introducing with
		The Problem
		The Setup
		The Clue
		Awesome Scraping Tools
		Study Drills
	Exercise 53 Getting Data from APIs
		Introducing JSON
		The Problem
		The Setup
		The Clue
		Awesome API Tools
		Study Drills
	Exercise 54 Data Conversion with pandas
		Introducing Pandoc
		The Problem
		The Setup
		The Clue
		Study Drills
	Exercise 55 How to Read Documentation (Featuring pandas)
		Why Programmer Documentation Sucks
		How to Actively Read Programmer Docs
		Step #1: Find the Docs
			Step #1 with pandas
		Step #2: Determine Your Strategy
			Step #2 with pandas
		Step #3: Code First, Docs Second
			Step #3 with pandas
		Step #4: Break or Change the Code
		Step #5: Take Notes
		Step #6: Use It on Your Own
			Step #6 with pandas
		Step #7: Write About What You Learned
			Step #7 with pandas
		Step #8: What’s the Gestalt?
			Step #8 with pandas
		Reading My pandas Curriculum
	Exercise 56 Using Only pandas
		Make a Project
		The Problem
		The Setup
		Study Drill
	Exercise 57 The SQL Crash Course
		What Is SQL?
		The Setup
		Fixing and Loading
			Back Up Your Database
		Create, Read, Update, Delete
		SELECT
		Date and Time
		INSERT
		UPDATE
		DELETE and Transactions
		Math, Aggregates, and GROUP BY
		Python Access
	Exercise 58 SQL Normalization
		What Is Normalization?
		First Normal Form
			Implementing 1NF
			Creating Tables in SQL
		Second Normal Form (2NF)
			Implementing 2NF
			Using Python
		Querying 2NF Data
		Querying with Joins
		Study Drills
	Exercise 59 SQL Relationships
		One-to-Many (1:M)
			One-to-Many in Python
			One-to-Many Problem
		Many-to-Many (M:M)
			Many-to-Many Problem
		One-to-One (1:1)
		Attributed Relations
		Querying M:M Tables
		Your Last Study Drill
	Exercise 60 Advice from an Even Older Programmer
Index
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