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Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python

Best Practices for Writing Clean Code

Author Al Sweigart

Paperback

$39.99 US

No Starch | No Starch Press

7.06"W x 9.24"H x 0.91"D | 26 oz | 21 per carton

On sale Dec 16, 2020 | 384 Pages | 9781593279660

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BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN NOVICE AND PROFESSIONAL

You've completed a basic Python programming tutorial or finished Al Sweigart's bestseller, Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. What's the next step toward becoming a capable, confident software developer?

Welcome to Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python. More than a mere collection of advanced syntax and masterful tips for writing clean code, you'll learn how to advance your Python programming skills by using the command line and other professional tools like code formatters, type checkers, linters, and version control. Sweigart takes you through best practices for setting up your development environment, naming variables, and improving readability, then tackles documentation, organization and performance measurement, as well as object-oriented design and the Big-O algorithm analysis commonly used in coding interviews. The skills you learn will boost your ability to program--not just in Python but in any language.

You'll learn:

Coding style, and how to use Python's Black auto-formatting tool for cleaner code

Common sources of bugs, and how to detect them with static analyzers

How to structure the files in your code projects with the Cookiecutter template tool

Functional programming techniques like lambda and higher-order functions

How to profile the speed of your code with Python's built-in timeit and cProfile modules

The computer science behind Big-O algorithm analysis

How to make your comments and docstrings informative, and how often to write them

How to create classes in object-oriented programming, and why they're used to organize code

Toward the end of the book you'll read a detailed source-code breakdown of two classic command-line games, the Tower of Hanoi (a logic puzzle) and Four-in-a-Row (a two-player tile-dropping game), and a breakdown of how their code follows the book's best practices. You'll test your skills by implementing the program yourself.

Of course, no single book can make you a professional software developer. But Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python will get you further down that path and make you a better programmer, as you learn to write readable code that's easy to debug and perfectly Pythonic

Requirements: Covers Python 3.6 and higher

Al Sweigart is a professional software developer who teaches programming to kids and adults. Sweigart has written several bestselling programming books for beginners, including Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python, Coding with Minecraft, and Cracking Codes with Python (all from No Starch Press).

Al Sweigart View titles by Al Sweigart

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Introduction

Part I: Getting Started
1.     Dealing with Errors and Asking for Help
2.     Environmental Setup
3.     Formatting with the Black Module

Part II: Best Practices, Tools, and Techniques
4.     Choosing Useful Names
5.     Finding Code Smells
6.     Writing Pythonic Code
7.     Programming Jargon
8.     Common Python Gotchas
9.     Esoteric Python Oddities
10. Crafting Effective Functions
11. Comments and Type Hints
12. Version Control with Git
13. Profiling Code

Part III: Practice Problems
14. Tower of Hanoi
15. Connect Four

Part IV: Readable Object-Oriented Programming
16. Classes and Objects
17. Inheritance
18. Pythonic Object-Oriented Programming

Index

"A great new book . . . Sweigart focuses on three major subjects: common difficulties in getting started (seeking help, setting up a work environment); best practices, tools, and techniques; and using object-oriented Python. The second section is the largest in the book . . . but each section can be read on its own. The book is all the more useful for collecting together between one pair of covers material that you would typically dig up from multiple resources."
—Serdar Yegulalp, InfoWorld

"My early Python programs work but could be improved massively with what Al writes about . . . a small goldmine of knowledge that beginners, intermediates and probably even advanced programmers will benefit from."
—GeekTechStuff

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