Learning Python topic and for anyone interested in Python

f33dm3bits

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I have always wanted to learn python, but I never really had the time. Now with COVID19 I have all the free time in the world, so I thought why not make good use of my time and use this time to learn python. I thought it would be helpful and insightful to create a topic where those who are learning python and those who are interested in python can share thoughts and help each other learn by:
  • Sharing your learning resources: Books, e-books, websites or other resources.
  • Sharing concepts and things you get stuck on and don't fully understand.
  • Sharing snippets of practice/example code when you don't understand what's happening.
  • Sharing project ideas to get some coding experience and learn to apply it for personal projects: Practice what you learn or you forget.
  • Other topics and discussions related to python programming/scripting.
  • Etc.
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**Please stay on topic, so only python related topics and discussions**
**Feel free to contact me if you have other good ideas to add to this main post**
 


quite a nice small one is to play with https://api.openweathermap.org to get the weather via python for your nearest location. You can sign up with openweathermap.org for free and get an api key.

the basics are you will import:
import urllib.request

and use urllib.request.urlopen(URL) where url will be for example see below :
BASE_URL = "https://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?"
CITY="Southend-on-sea,GB"
API_KEY="longAlphaNumeic" //key from openweather
URL = BASE_URL + "q=" + CITY +"&mode=json" +"&units=metric" +"&appid=" + API_KEY
y= urllib.request.urlopen(URL)
raw_data = y.read()
 
One great resource for Python ebooks (And Linux/cyberecurity/tech in general) has been:

In the past few years I’ve bought numerous bundles of tech ebooks by publishers like O’Reilly, Apress, Packt and NoStarch.

Sometimes there are video tutorials included in the bundles too!

I’m talking $15USD (~£12 GBP) for a bundle of, 15-20 or more books, worth hundreds if you go by the cover prices.

There have also been bundles containing courses on Zenva and various other e-learning platforms, covering Python, game development with unity, mobile app development, cyber security. etc.

Well worth keeping an eye on!
 
Always thought Apress as a published made sure that content was really well presented.As for e-books nothing like the real thing.
 
I'm currently going through the O'Reilly book Learning Python, it has 1500 pages but everything is covered in great detail and the author has a lot of experience in teaching python to people and teaching python is his life work.

@JasKinasis I know HumbleBundle I have got quite the collection of Unix/Linux and other ebooks which I got there, they have some great offers now and then. Although when I get real serious about learning a certain topic, I prefer the DTF format. Now days usually if I buy the DTF format I also buy the kindle version for when I am out so that I still can easily look something up without having to carry around that extra weight of books.
 
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I actually recently switched to a different book for learning python because the book I was reading felt more like reading a dictionary or an encyclopedia. So now I am going through Python Crash Course since it seems more like an actual learning book and it's project based learning, I will always have the other book to fall back on for the more advanced stuff and can get back to it once I am a bit more comfortable with python.
 
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now I am going through Python Crash Course since it seems more like an actual learning book

That's what I use. I'm no python expert , (I know enough to be dangerous) but I'm getting
there. When I started using Linux, it seemed the whole world was written in Perl, but it
seems more and more things are moving to python. (There's still a LOT of perl around).
but as a trend, a lot of system tools are moving more towards python.
I was a little surprised to find out python is older than javascript and PHP.
 
What IDE or text editor do you use to write python code? I currently use sublimetext because it was advised by the book I'm using to learn python.
 
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What IDE or text editor do you use to write python code? I currently use sublimetext because it was advised by the book I'm using to learn python.

Vim - all day every day!
Literally, just Vim in a terminal in tmux. If I need an IDE type layout - I'll open another pane in tmux to test/run/debug my python scripts.

For debugging, I use pdb in the terminal via pythonx -m pdb /path/to/script - where x is the version of python I'm dealing with. I try to work exclusively with python3 ATM, but I do have some old python2 scripts knocking about that I haven't updated.

I use vim for pretty much everything text related.

Edit: before anybody mentions that vim has a built in terminal - I am aware of this, but I prefer to use a tmux terminal in a split, because then I can full screen it in tmux, if I need to!
 
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