Here’s another Python blog. Why? You have surely heard many times that the best way to truly understand something is to teach it to someone else. You’re that someone else! So yes, this blog is primarily for my own benefit, but if you find some of these posts useful too, then we’ll all benefit!
What to expect from this Python blog?
I’ll be picking topics from programming and Python (clue is in the name) but I won’t be writing very technical tutorials about how to use a certain tool. Instead, I’ll be trying to understand what various tools and methods do–what they really do, that is–with a mixture of narrative and technical to describe what’s happening behind the scenes.
What do I mean by this? The blog posts will not be full, detailed tutorials like the chapters in The Python Coding Book or my articles on Real Python, say. Instead they will describe an alternative way of explaining and understanding what’s really happening with these Python tools and methods. There will be code, of course–that’s the technical part. But there will also be narrative, such as using analogies and non-coding examples.
This is my way of learning something: I try to visualise it. In this Python blog, I’ll be sharing these visualisations with you. Having to fill in the details of my ideas and analogies to make them publication-ready will help me understand things better. That’s the selfish aim for this blog. But if you also find these blogs useful to help you understand more, then that’s a win-win situation. So there is an altruistic aim too!
What topics will I cover?
A lot of what I do focuses on teaching beginners, and those working with quantitative applications of programming, such as in science, finance, and similar fields. But the posts on this blog will span the whole range, from beginner’s topics to more “intermediate” and “advanced” stuff. Now, my problem with these terms is that they’re not easily defined. Things that a begginer might think are intermediate, and advanced person may view as for beginners.
The one thing we can easily define is where the beginner’s category starts. Beyond that, it’s very subjective. I’ll try to tag all posts as either Beginners or Beyond Beginners, but you’ll be the best judge of whether the level works for you.
Who am I?
Do you care? I’d suggest that you don’t need to bother about who I am as long as you like the content! But if you do care (thank you, I’m honoured!), then here’s the brief bio. I’m a physicist who no longer works as a physicist. I spent well over a decade in academia. I now run codetoday which is a company that teaches coding to both kids and adults. I’ve also written The Python Coding Book (this site!). Besides the book and this blog, the other place you can find my writings is on Real Python where I regularly write tutorials.
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The Python Coding Stack
Regular articles for the intermediate Python programmer or a beginner who wants to “read ahead”