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About the Book

Note: This book has been replaced with a new edition.

Learn how to program with Python 3 from beginning to end. Python 101 starts off with the fundamentals of Python and then builds onto what you've learned from there. The audience of this book is primarily people who have programmed in the past but want to learn Python. This book covers a fair amount of intermediate level material in addition to the beginner material.

To cover all this information, the book is split into five parts. 

Part One

The first part is the beginner section. In it you will learn all the basics of Python. From Python types (strings, lists, dictionaries) to conditional statements to loops. You will also learn about comprehensions, functions and classes and everything in between! 

Part Two

This section will be a curated tour of the Python Standard Library. The intent isn't to cover everything in it, but instead it is to show the reader that you can do a lot with Python right out of the box. We'll be covering the modules I find the most useful in day-to-day programming tasks, such as os, sys, logging, threads, and more.

Part Three

An all intermediate section covering lambda, decorators, properties, debugging, testing and profiling.

Part Four

Now things get really interesting! In part four, we will be learning how to install 3rd party libraries (i.e. packages) from the Python Package Index and other locations. We will cover easy_install and pip. This section will also be a series of tutorials where you will learn how to use the packages you download. For example, you will learn how to download a file, parse XML, use an Object Relational Mapper to work with a database, etc.

Part Five

The last section of the book will cover how to share your code with your friends and the world! You will learn how to package it up and share it on the Python Package Index (i.e. how to create an egg or wheel). You will also learn how to create executables using py2exe, bb_freeze, cx_freeze and PyInstaller. Finally you will learn how to create an installer using Inno Setup.

About the Author

Michael Driscoll

@driscollis

Michael has been programming with Python since 2006. He is the author of the popular Python blog, The Mouse Vs. the Python. Michael has been a technical reviewer for Packt Publishing and No Starch Press.  He is also a contributor on Real Python.

He also co-authored The Essential Core Python Cheat Sheet for DZone.

Michael released his first book, Python 101, June 3rd, 2014. He wrote the follow up, Python 201: Intermediate Python and published it in the summer of 2016. He is also the author of wxPython Cookbook from Apress as well as Python Interviews from Packt Publishing.

Michael is currently working on some new books as well.