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The terms beginners, intermediate, and advanced are often used, but they’re really hard to define. What’s intermediate for a beginner is beginner’s stuff for someone advanced, and so on. Beginners has a clear starting point, so some posts will be tagged as beginners. Others will be tagged Beyond Beginners. It’s up to you to judge whether the level is fine for you.
Note: This article has now moved here: Sequences in Python (Data Structure Categories #2) – Sequences are different from iterables • Part 2 of the Data Structure Categories Series Here's an introduction to the article: You started your journey through Python's main data structure categories in the first article in this series, which dealt with… Continue reading What’s a Python Sequence? [Python Data Structure Series #2]
Note: This article has now moved here: Iterable: Python's Stepping Stones – What makes an iterable iterable? Part 1 of the Data Structure Categories Series Here's an introduction to the article: You're familiar with data structures such as lists, dictionaries, tuples, sets, and more. You may even know about the similarities and differences between their… Continue reading What’s a Python Iterable? [Python Data Structure Series #1]
When I was young, we played arcade games in their original form on tall rectangular coin-operated machines with buttons and joysticks. These games had a resurgence as smartphone apps in recent years, useful to keep one occupied during a long commute. In this article, I'll resurrect one as a 2D Python game and use it… Continue reading Anatomy of a 2D Game using Python’s turtle and Object-Oriented Programming
The keyword is and the operator == are not the same. Yet, many programmers often use one when they should use the other. Let's look at the difference between is and == in Python with the help of a £5 note and a trip to my local coffee shop. In this article, you'll: Find out… Continue reading Understanding The Difference Between `is` and `==` in Python: The £5 Note and a Trip to a Coffee Shop
I first played the board game Risk during my doctoral studies. We occasionally stayed up all night playing this game. I hadn't played it for many years, but I bought it "for the kids" this Christmas, so I got to play it again. And soon, I found myself wondering what the odds are for the… Continue reading Using Python’s NumPy To Improve Your Board Game Strategy: Your Odds When Attacking in ‘Risk’
You've already covered a lot of ground in this Intermediate Python Functions series. In this article, you'll read about a relatively new addition in Python called type hinting or type annotation. Unlike all the other topics you learnt about in the previous articles, this one will not change the behaviour of the function you define.… Continue reading Using Type Hints When Defining A Python Function [Intermediate Python Functions Series #6]
In previous articles in this series, you read about positional and keyword arguments, making arguments optional by adding a default value, and including any number of positional and keyword arguments using *args and **kwargs. In this article, it's the turn of another flavour of argument. You'll look at parameters that can only accept positional arguments… Continue reading Using Positional-Only And Keyword-Only Arguments in Python [Intermediate Python Functions Series #5]
In the first three articles in this Series, you familiarised yourself with the key terms when dealing with functions. You also explored positional and keyword arguments and optional arguments with default values. In this article, you'll look at different types of optional arguments. Rather unfortunately, these are often referred to by the obscure names args… Continue reading Argh! What are args and kwargs in Python? [Intermediate Python Functions Series #4]
We continue our journey through Python functions by looking at optional arguments and default values. In this article, you'll see how you can define a function with an optional argument. A default value is used if the argument is not included in the function call. Overview Of The Intermediate Python Functions Series Here's an overview… Continue reading Optional Arguments With Default Values in Python Functions [Intermediate Python Functions Series #3]
In the first article in this Intermediate Python Functions Series, you made sure you got your terminology right. So you know what an argument is. But what are positional arguments and keyword arguments in Python? In this article, you'll see how you can choose to use either of the two in many situations. Later in… Continue reading Using Positional Arguments and Named or Keyword Arguments in Python Functions [Intermediate Python Functions Series #2]