Wed 19 Feb 2014

ANN: Python 101 – The Book!

Posted by Mike under Books, Python
[7] Comments

mousecovertitlejpg_sm2

My readers have been asking me to write a book for a few years now and I’ve finally decided to bite the bullet and give it a go. For my first book, I decided to write something that’s for beginners and intermediate programmers. There will be four parts to the book with the first part being aimed squarely at the beginner programmer. The next 3 parts will follow a more cookbook-like style in that they will contain a lot of tutorials. I’ll be folding some of the articles from my blog into the book and updating them if appropriate, but there will be plenty of new content.

To get things going, I am running a Kickstarter campaign. to raise some funds to help in the development of the book. If you’ve ever found this blog useful, please consider supporting the funding of my book.

I copied most of the text from the Kickstarter campaign here for your convenience: (more…)

 

Thu 6 Mar 2014

wxPython: How to Disable a Wizard’s Next Button

Posted by Mike under GUI Toolkits, Python, wxPython
No Comments

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 disable the Next in a wxPython wizard. (more…)

 

Thu 6 Mar 2014

Python 101 – We’re Halfway Through the Campaign!

Posted by Mike under Books, Python
[5] Comments

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: 1500 backers

If we can reach 1500 backers, then I’m going to create some companion screencasts to go with the book. These screencasts wouldn’t be done in time to launch with the book and probably won’t cover every single chapter, so I would just release them during the summer and fill in the blanks according to the feedback I receive. Also I plan to release the screencasts for anyone, probably by publishing them on Youtube.

On the topic of licensing

I mentioned in my last update that I was thinking about doing a website version of the book and attaching a Creative Commons license to it. I didn’t get a lot of feedback from that, but of the few that did respond, there seems to be more who think I should give the book away for free. By turning the book into a website, I suspect that the number of people who will purchase the book will drop significantly. So we’ll make this into a special two-fold stretch goal:

Stretch Goal #3 – $25,000 or 2500 backers

If we reach $25k in funding or 2500 backers, then I’ll release the book as a website, but with a copyright. If we get significantly higher than that, then I will consider releasing the website contents under Creative Commons instead.

In the mean time, I ask you to tell your friends, classmates and colleagues about this Kickstarter. The more we spread the word, the more likely we are to reach the stretch goals!

P.S. I am finishing up the last half of the last chapter of Part II. Hopefully Part II will be completely roughed out by the end of day or early tomorrow.

 

Mon 3 Mar 2014

Python 101 – Writing Update

Posted by Mike under Books, Python
1 Comment

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 the book under a Creative Commons or similar license. While I’m not really interested in releasing the eBook itself like that, I am considering turning the book’s contents into a website, kind of like Dive Into Python.  

I may make that my next stretch goal. Let me know what you think in the comments.

If you’d like to support the book, feel free to go to the Kickstarter page

 

Wed 26 Feb 2014

Python 101 Book: Behind the Scenes – The Cover

Posted by Mike under Books, Cross-Platform, Python
No Comments

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 it so it looked like a drawing or a painting. Then I started thinking about my blog and how my readers were the ones encouraging me to write the book in the first place. So I ended up going with one of my other ideas, which was to continue the Mouse Vs Python theme.

I ended up hiring an artist I know who did my original blog logos. His name is Tyler and he owns and operates Killustration Studios. You can see some of his work on deviantArt. Anyway, I told him my ideas for the book cover and I thought I would share the various versions of the cover as it evolved.

The First Rough Cover

The following image is the first version of the cover. It’s pretty rough, but I could see my vision taking shape:

python101rough01072014_0000_sm

(more…)

 

Wed 26 Feb 2014

Python 101: Reading and Writing CSV Files

Posted by Mike under Cross-Platform, Education, Python
No Comments

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 think of each line as a row and each field as a column. The CSV format has no standard, but they are similar enough that the csv module will be able to read the vast majority of CSV files. You can also write CSV files using the csv module. (more…)

 

Mon 24 Feb 2014

Python Concurrency: An Intro to Threads

Posted by Mike under Cross-Platform, Python
[7] Comments

Python has a number of different concurrency constructs such as threading, queues and multiprocessing. The threading module used to be the primary way of accomplishing concurrency. A few years ago, the multiprocessing module was added to the Python suite of standard libraries. This article will be focused on the threading module though. (more…)

 

Fri 21 Feb 2014

Python 101: Book Outline

Posted by Mike under Education, Python
No Comments

I’m sure some of you have been wondering if I had a more concrete outline of the book that I am currently writing. As a matter of fact, I do. Here’s what I have so far:

Part One: Learning the Basics

  • Chapter 1 – IDLE
  • Chapter 2 – Strings
  • Chapter 3 – Lists, Tuples and Dictionaries
  • Chapter 4 – if/elif/else statements
  • Chapter 5 – Loops
  • Chapter 6 – Comprehensions
  • Chapter 7 – Exception handling
  • Chapter 8 – Working with Files
  • Chapter 9 – Importing
  • Chapter 10 – Functions
  • Chapter 11 – Classes

Note: Part One is written and in the editing phase

(more…)

 

Tue 18 Feb 2014

eBook Review: Python High Performance Programming

Posted by Mike under Books, Python
No Comments

Last year, Packt Publishing asked me to be a technical reviewer for a book called Python High Performance Programming by Gabriele Lanaro. It was published in December, 2013. For those of you with short attention spans, I give you my short review:

Quick Review

  • Why I picked it up: I got it for free, but I would have picked it up because the subject matter interested me
  • Why I finished it: This book had lots of interesting tips that made me want to keep reading it
  • I’d give it to: Someone who wants to learn about optimizing their code

If that whetted your appetite (more…)

 

Fri 14 Feb 2014

Python 101: How to Change a Dict Into a Class

Posted by Mike under Cross-Platform, Python
[7] Comments

I work with a lot of dictionaries at my job. Sometimes the dictionaries get really complicated with lots of nested data structures embedded within them. Recently I got a little tired of trying to remember all the keys in my dictionaries so I decided to change one of my dictionaries into a class so I could access the keys as instance variables / attributes. If you’ve ever gotten sick

Here’s one simple way to do it:

########################################################################
class Dict2Obj(object):
    """
    Turns a dictionary into a class
    """
 
    #----------------------------------------------------------------------
    def __init__(self, dictionary):
        """Constructor"""
        for key in dictionary:
            setattr(self, key, dictionary[key])
 
 
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
if __name__ == "__main__":
    ball_dict = {"color":"blue",
                 "size":"8 inches",
                 "material":"rubber"}
    ball = Dict2Obj(ball_dict)

(more…)

 

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