Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python, 4th Edition

Author: Al Sweigart
Publisher: No Starch Press
ISBN: 1593277954
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Book Description
Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python will teach you how to make computer games using the popular Python programming language—even if you’ve never programmed before! Begin by building classic games like Hangman, Guess the Number, and Tic-Tac-Toe, and then work your way up to more advanced games, like a text-based treasure hunting game and an animated collision-dodging game with sound effects. Along the way, you’ll learn key programming and math concepts that will help you take your game programming to the next level. Learn how to: –Combine loops, variables, and flow control statements into real working programs –Choose the right data structures for the job, such as lists, dictionaries, and tuples –Add graphics and animation to your games with the pygame module –Handle keyboard and mouse input –Program simple artificial intelligence so you can play against the computer –Use cryptography to convert text messages into secret code –Debug your programs and find common errors As you work through each game, you’ll build a solid foundation in Python and an understanding of computer science fundamentals. What new game will you create with the power of Python? The projects in this book are compatible with Python 3.

Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python

Author: Al Sweigart
Publisher: No Starch Press
ISBN: 1593279663
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
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

The Big Book of Small Python Projects

Author: Al Sweigart
Publisher: No Starch Press
ISBN: 1718501242
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
Best-selling author Al Sweigart shows you how to easily build over 80 fun programs with minimal code and maximum creativity. If you’ve mastered basic Python syntax and you’re ready to start writing programs, you’ll find The Big Book of Small Python Projects both enlightening and fun. This collection of 81 Python projects will have you making digital art, games, animations, counting pro- grams, and more right away. Once you see how the code works, you’ll practice re-creating the programs and experiment by adding your own custom touches. These simple, text-based programs are 256 lines of code or less. And whether it’s a vintage screensaver, a snail-racing game, a clickbait headline generator, or animated strands of DNA, each project is designed to be self-contained so you can easily share it online. You’ll create: • Hangman, Blackjack, and other games to play against your friends or the computer • Simulations of a forest fire, a million dice rolls, and a Japanese abacus • Animations like a virtual fish tank, a rotating cube, and a bouncing DVD logo screensaver • A first-person 3D maze game • Encryption programs that use ciphers like ROT13 and Vigenère to conceal text If you’re tired of standard step-by-step tutorials, you’ll love the learn-by-doing approach of The Big Book of Small Python Projects. It’s proof that good things come in small programs!

Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition

Author: Al Sweigart
Publisher: No Starch Press
ISBN: 1593279922
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 593

Book Description
Learn how to code while you write programs that effortlessly perform useful feats of automation! The second edition of this international fan favorite includes a brand-new chapter on input validation, Gmail and Google Sheets automations, tips for updating CSV files, and more. If you've ever spent hours renaming files or updating spreadsheet cells, you know how tedious tasks like these can be. But what if you could have your computer do them for you? Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition teaches even the technically uninclined how to write programs that do in minutes what would take hours to do by hand—no prior coding experience required! This new, fully revised edition of Al Sweigart’s bestselling Pythonic classic, Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, covers all the basics of Python 3 while exploring its rich library of modules for performing specific tasks, like scraping data off the Web, filling out forms, renaming files, organizing folders, sending email responses, and merging, splitting, or encrypting PDFs. There’s also a brand-new chapter on input validation, tutorials on automating Gmail and Google Sheets, tips on automatically updating CSV files, and other recent feats of automations that improve your efficiency. Detailed, step-by-step instructions walk you through each program, allowing you to create useful tools as you build out your programming skills, and updated practice projects at the end of each chapter challenge you to improve those programs and use your newfound skills to automate similar tasks. Boring tasks no longer have to take to get through—and neither does learning Python!

Python Crash Course, 2nd Edition

Author: Eric Matthes
Publisher: No Starch Press
ISBN: 1593279280
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 546

Book Description
The best-selling Python book in the world, with over 1 million copies sold! A fast-paced, no-nonsense, updated guide to programming in Python. If you've been thinking about learning how to code or picking up Python, this internationally bestselling guide to the most popular programming language is your quickest, easiest way to get started and go! Even if you have no experience whatsoever, Python Crash Course, 2nd Edition, will have you writing programs, solving problems, building computer games, and creating data visualizations in no time. You’ll begin with basic concepts like variables, lists, classes, and loops—with the help of fun skill-strengthening exercises for every topic—then move on to making interactive programs and best practices for testing your code. Later chapters put your new knowledge into play with three cool projects: a 2D Space Invaders-style arcade game, a set of responsive data visualizations you’ll build with Python's handy libraries (Pygame, Matplotlib, Plotly, Django), and a customized web app you can deploy online. Why wait any longer? Start your engine and code!

Python Automation Cookbook

Author: Jaime Buelta
Publisher: Packt Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1800202598
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 527

Book Description
Get a firm grip on the core processes including browser automation, web scraping, Word, Excel, and GUI automation with Python 3.8 and higher Key FeaturesAutomate integral business processes such as report generation, email marketing, and lead generationExplore automated code testing and Python’s growth in data science and AI automation in three new chaptersUnderstand techniques to extract information and generate appealing graphs, and reports with MatplotlibBook Description In this updated and extended version of Python Automation Cookbook, each chapter now comprises the newest recipes and is revised to align with Python 3.8 and higher. The book includes three new chapters that focus on using Python for test automation, machine learning projects, and for working with messy data. This edition will enable you to develop a sharp understanding of the fundamentals required to automate business processes through real-world tasks, such as developing your first web scraping application, analyzing information to generate spreadsheet reports with graphs, and communicating with automatically generated emails. Once you grasp the basics, you will acquire the practical knowledge to create stunning graphs and charts using Matplotlib, generate rich graphics with relevant information, automate marketing campaigns, build machine learning projects, and execute debugging techniques. By the end of this book, you will be proficient in identifying monotonous tasks and resolving process inefficiencies to produce superior and reliable systems. What you will learnLearn data wrangling with Python and Pandas for your data science and AI projectsAutomate tasks such as text classification, email filtering, and web scraping with PythonUse Matplotlib to generate a variety of stunning graphs, charts, and mapsAutomate a range of report generation tasks, from sending SMS and email campaigns to creating templates, adding images in Word, and even encrypting PDFsMaster web scraping and web crawling of popular file formats and directories with tools like Beautiful SoupBuild cool projects such as a Telegram bot for your marketing campaign, a reader from a news RSS feed, and a machine learning model to classify emails to the correct department based on their contentCreate fire-and-forget automation tasks by writing cron jobs, log files, and regexes with Python scriptingWho this book is for Python Automation Cookbook - Second Edition is for developers, data enthusiasts or anyone who wants to automate monotonous manual tasks related to business processes such as finance, sales, and HR, among others. Working knowledge of Python is all you need to get started with this book.

Python Crash Course

Author: Eric Matthes
Publisher: No Starch Press
ISBN: 1593277393
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 564

Book Description
Python Crash Course is a fast-paced, thorough introduction to Python that will have you writing programs, solving problems, and making things that work in no time. In the first half of the book, you’ll learn about basic programming concepts, such as lists, dictionaries, classes, and loops, and practice writing clean and readable code with exercises for each topic. You’ll also learn how to make your programs interactive and how to test your code safely before adding it to a project. In the second half of the book, you’ll put your new knowledge into practice with three substantial projects: a Space Invaders–inspired arcade game, data visualizations with Python’s super-handy libraries, and a simple web app you can deploy online. As you work through Python Crash Course you’ll learn how to: –Use powerful Python libraries and tools, including matplotlib, NumPy, and Pygal –Make 2D games that respond to keypresses and mouse clicks, and that grow more difficult as the game progresses –Work with data to generate interactive visualizations –Create and customize Web apps and deploy them safely online –Deal with mistakes and errors so you can solve your own programming problems If you’ve been thinking seriously about digging into programming, Python Crash Course will get you up to speed and have you writing real programs fast. Why wait any longer? Start your engines and code! Uses Python 2 and 3

Fluent Python

Author: Luciano Ramalho
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 1491946253
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 755

Book Description
Python’s simplicity lets you become productive quickly, but this often means you aren’t using everything it has to offer. With this hands-on guide, you’ll learn how to write effective, idiomatic Python code by leveraging its best—and possibly most neglected—features. Author Luciano Ramalho takes you through Python’s core language features and libraries, and shows you how to make your code shorter, faster, and more readable at the same time. Many experienced programmers try to bend Python to fit patterns they learned from other languages, and never discover Python features outside of their experience. With this book, those Python programmers will thoroughly learn how to become proficient in Python 3. This book covers: Python data model: understand how special methods are the key to the consistent behavior of objects Data structures: take full advantage of built-in types, and understand the text vs bytes duality in the Unicode age Functions as objects: view Python functions as first-class objects, and understand how this affects popular design patterns Object-oriented idioms: build classes by learning about references, mutability, interfaces, operator overloading, and multiple inheritance Control flow: leverage context managers, generators, coroutines, and concurrency with the concurrent.futures and asyncio packages Metaprogramming: understand how properties, attribute descriptors, class decorators, and metaclasses work

Impractical Python Projects

Author: Lee Vaughan
Publisher: No Starch Press
ISBN: 1593278918
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 426

Book Description
Impractical Python Projects is a collection of fun and educational projects designed to entertain programmers while enhancing their Python skills. It picks up where the complete beginner books leave off, expanding on existing concepts and introducing new tools that you'll use every day. And to keep things interesting, each project includes a zany twist featuring historical incidents, pop culture references, and literary allusions. You'll flex your problem-solving skills and employ Python's many useful libraries to do things like: - Help James Bond crack a high-tech safe with a hill-climbing algorithm - Write haiku poems using Markov Chain Analysis - Use genetic algorithms to breed a race of gigantic rats - Crack the world's most successful military cipher using cryptanalysis - Derive the anagram, "I am Lord Voldemort" using linguistical sieves - Plan your parents' secure retirement with Monte Carlo simulation - Save the sorceress Zatanna from a stabby death using palingrams - Model the Milky Way and calculate our odds of detecting alien civilizations - Help the world's smartest woman win the Monty Hall problem argument - Reveal Jupiter's Great Red Spot using optical stacking - Save the head of Mary, Queen of Scots with steganography - Foil corporate security with invisible electronic ink Simulate volcanoes, map Mars, and more, all while gaining valuable experience using free modules like Tkinter, matplotlib, Cprofile, Pylint, Pygame, Pillow, and Python-Docx. Whether you're looking to pick up some new Python skills or just need a pick-me-up, you'll find endless educational, geeky fun with Impractical Python Projects.

Coding with Minecraft

Author: Al Sweigart
Publisher: No Starch Press
ISBN: 1593278535
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
A hands-on introduction to coding that teaches you how to program bots to do cool things in the game you love--Minecraft! This book takes the robotic "turtle" method, and extends it to the 3D, interactive world of Minecraft. You've mined for diamonds, crafted dozens of tools, and built all sorts of structures--but what if you could program robots to do all of that for you in a fraction of the time? In Coding with Minecraft®, you'll create a virtual robot army with Lua, a programming language used by professional game developers. Step-by-step coding projects will show you how to write programs that automatically dig mines, collect materials, craft items, and build anything that you can imagine. Along the way, you'll explore key computer science concepts like data types, functions, variables, and more. Learn how to: - Program robots that make smart decisions with flow control - Reuse code so that your robots can farm any crop you want, including wheat, sugar cane, and even cacti! - Program a factory that generates infinite building supplies - Design an algorithm for creating walls and buildings of any size - Code yourself a pickaxe-swinging robotic lumberjack! - Create a robot that digs mine shafts with stairs so you can explore safely Bonus activities in each chapter will help you take your coding skills to the next level. By the end of the book, you'll understand how powerful coding can be and have plenty of robots at your beck and call.