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90% of Python in 90 Minutes (2013)

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Re: 90% of Python in 90 Minutes (2013)

#11
post #7

You could easily reduce that ten fold, most of the slides contain little information. Every developer already knows that you can add integers, combine booleans with and, and have alternatives with if and else. Or how lists and maps work. No need to repeat this in such detail, just list the type names, keywords and operators. Instead focus on what is special about Python like indentation and colons, slicing, __iter__,…

You can just skip the slides you already know.

Everybody has a different level of proficiency as a developer and a guide like this is aimed at a beginner, not at a seasoned developer. Since you don't know their background it doesn't hurt to repeat already familiar stuff because it is easy to move past that quickly if you already know it, but it would be a lot harder to make sense of the package if you so much as miss one or two simple steps or elements.

For me one of the take-aways was the negative stride in a slice, I had not seen that yet and a couple of clever tricks such as 'dir' and 'help'. I've been doing nothing but python lately, and going through the whole deck to stop at the things I didn't know yet took only a couple of minutes.

Re: 90% of Python in 90 Minutes (2013)

#12

From slide 32: > (In Python 3 // is integer division) I find it clearer to describe this behavior as "floor" division. You might think "integer division" would have the same results as python 3's `int(a / b)` when `a` and `b` are ints, but, no, this is not the case. I never could quite understand why all the hub-bub about "integer division" and why it should change from python 2 to python 3 because the behavior seeme…

It is also worth noting that in most languages -2 / 3 yields 0 and not -1, i.e. integer devision rounds towards zero, not towards negative infinity.

Re: 90% of Python in 90 Minutes (2013)

#16
Why are these books always focused on a fast learning principle? I really don't think anything useful can be made from 90 minutes of quick reading. It's a great refresher for people that didn't work with the language for a while. Now I remember python's annoying indents.

Re: 90% of Python in 90 Minutes (2013)

#17
post #12

From slide 32: > (In Python 3 // is integer division) I find it clearer to describe this behavior as "floor" division. You might think "integer division" would have the same results as python 3's `int(a / b)` when `a` and `b` are ints, but, no, this is not the case. I never could quite understand why all the hub-bub about "integer division" and why it should change from python 2 to python 3 because the behavior seeme…

It is also worth noting that in most languages -2 / 3 yields 0 and not -1, i.e. integer devision rounds towards zero, not towards negative infinity.

Yes, in fact that's the point I'm trying to focus on but never made explicit. Thanks.

Re: 90% of Python in 90 Minutes (2013)

#18

Why are these books always focused on a fast learning principle? I really don't think anything useful can be made from 90 minutes of quick reading. It's a great refresher for people that didn't work with the language for a while. Now I remember python's annoying indents.

Its potentially valuable for anyone who needs to do some quick work in Python. There are quite a lot of little Python scripts I work with, even though I mostly do Ruby. I don't need (nor do I want to) become a Pythonista just to make some edits now and again.
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