After completing a basic Python tutorial or Al Sweigart’s popular book, “Automate the Boring Stuff with Python,” you might be wondering what comes next on your journey to becoming a skilled software developer.
Enter “Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python.” This book goes beyond just advanced syntax and tips for writing clean code. It helps you enhance your Python skills by introducing you to professional tools such as the command line, code formatters, type checkers, linters, and version control systems. Al Sweigart guides you through best practices for setting up your development environment, naming variables, improving code readability, and more. You’ll also learn about documentation, code organization, performance measurement, object-oriented design, and Big-O algorithm analysis, which is often covered in coding interviews. These skills will enhance your programming capabilities not only in Python but in any language.
In this book, you will learn:
- Coding style and how to use Python’s Black auto-formatting tool for cleaner code.
- How to identify common sources of bugs using static analyzers.
- How to structure your code projects using the Cookiecutter template tool.
- Functional programming techniques like lambda and higher-order functions.
- How to measure code performance with Python’s timeit and cProfile modules.
- The computer science principles behind Big-O algorithm analysis.
- How to write informative comments and docstrings, and how often to include them.
- How to create classes in object-oriented programming and their role in organizing code.
Towards the end of the book, you’ll find a detailed breakdown of the source code for two classic command-line games: the Tower of Hanoi and Four-in-a-Row. You’ll see how their code adheres to the book’s best practices and test your skills by implementing the programs yourself.
While no single book can turn you into a professional software developer, “Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python” will move you further along that path, helping you write readable, debuggable, and Pythonic code.
Requirements: Covers Python 3.6 and higher.
About the Author: Al Sweigart is known for creating the popular Python package pyautogui.
For more insights and resources on Python and software development, visit ThinkJava.net.
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