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Introducing "Dead Simple Python"

Jason C. McDonald on January 13, 2019

Ever spent three hours trying to find that bit of knowledge that everyone seemed to have but you? As a self-trained Python developer, I've sometim...
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Damian Rivas

I just read the first two parts that are currently released. I gotta say, with Python being around the 5th language I dive into, I really appreciate this style of teaching! It's hard finding teaching material that doesn't start with "what is a variable" lol.

Do share if you have any resources for people picking up Python who are not new to programming. :)

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Jason C. McDonald • Edited

So glad you're enjoying the series!

One of the reasons I'm writing this series is because there seem to be so few resources for picking up Python without "relearning" programming. In the #python IRC room, we usually just link people to the Official Python Tutorial, although that sometimes feels like drinking out of a fire hose. ;-)

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Mandar Vaze

Are you planning to cover pyenv - which allows to run multiple versions like 3.6 and 3.7 side by side ?

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Jason C. McDonald • Edited

Honestly, probably not (although anything is possible). One, I've never used it myself, although that might change in the future. You can accomplish much the same end (perhaps a bit less elegantly) using virtual environments, so until someone is game for learning pyenv, they'll be just peachy. ;)

Two, I'm having to write these articles from as OS-agnostic standpoint, and I don't always have Windows or Mac systems to test on. (I rely on docs and my existing knowledge of those operating systems for that. Since this works with system paths, that gets especially tricky. (I'm deliberately avoiding the entire topic of system paths for reason of OS availability on this end.)

Three, it's something of a can of worms diving into many tools: if I cover pyenv, undoubtedly someone will ask me to cover pythonbrew, pythonz, pipenv (actually, already had four requests for that), and so forth. So, while pyenv looks like a thoroughly awesome tool, it seems a bit beyond the very specific knowledge level I'm aiming for. As it is, the Testing article is going to be a trick, because I need to cover all three of the main testing frameworks for Python, lest someone comment that I left out an important one.

Anyway, all that to say - probably no. However, if you wrote an article on it, I'd happily add a link to it at the bottom of the Virtual Environments article. :)

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Jaaki

Yay, Thanks Jason.

I'm really enjoying my journey with python so far. It's only been a short while since I started writing python, but it has found a place in my heart.

Looking forward to your insights.

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Steve Ziegler

Python is such an awesome language. So easy to do powerful things without a lot of cruft. Thanks for doing this.

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Ankur Tiwari

Pure gem!

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Andrew (he/him)

I don't know how I'm only discovering this series now. It looks great! I'll definitely bookmark this and refer back to it for a Python refresher.

Thanks for writing, Jason!

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Jeffery

Fantastic tutorials. I hope the rest come out one day !