Python Programming Illustrated For Beginners & Intermediates“Learn By Doing” Approach-Step By Step Ultimate Guide To Mastering Python: The Future Is Here!

Comprehensions

Chapter 1

Introduction

Python is a loosely typed object oriented programming language used to perform variety of programming tasks ranging from web development and desktop application development to data science and machine learning etc. Owing to its simplicity of syntax and ease of learning, Python has become one of the leading programming languages of the world. Python was created by Guido van Rossum in late 1980s. This book provides a gateway to in-depth Python programming.

Why Python?

There are several advantages of learning Python. Some of them are as follows:

Easy to learn

Python is one of the easiest languages to learn owing to its super simple syntax and loose typing. Unlike other languages, you don’t have to learn how to use myriads of bracket types in order specify code blocks. You also don’t get end of line semicolon errors. Finally, you also don’t have to specify the type of variable while storing data in it. These points might sound trivial to expert programmers, but for a person new to programming they are serious turn-offs.

Open Source and Large Developer Community

Python is an open source language which means it can be used to develop, share and distribute applications for commercial as well as non-commercial purposes without any copyright infringements. Furthermore, Python’s large developer community makes it easier to lookup for solutions to the problem.

Support for Web development

Python can be used for developing websites. In fact there are some very good Python frameworks such as Django and Flask that make server side web development much easier and robust.

Used for Data Science Machine Learning

You would have heard the term Data is the future. If data is really the future, then Python is surely the language to learn since most of the data science and machine learning are currently being implemented via Python. There are several machine learning and deep learning libraries such as Sklearn, Tensorflow, Keras that made it simple to develop complex machine learning models.

Important Features of Python

Following are some of the most important features of Python:

Source code to Byte code

Python source code is compiled directly to byte code without any intermediate steps. This makes Python script run on multiple platforms without requiring any additional tool.

Object Oriented

Python is 100% object oriented language. Everything in Python is an object.  Furthermore, python provides an easy way to create new objects via classes.

Support for C/C++ Extension

Python code can be further extended in C and C++. Speed of a Python program can be significantly increased this way.

Dynamic Language

Python is a dynamic language. Values, instead of variables are bound to types. Furthermore, Method and function lookup is performed at runtime. 

Automatic Garbage Collection

Garbage collection is performed automatically in Python. However, gc module can be used to perform garbage collection at any given time.

Highly Structured Language

Statements, functions, classes, modules and packages and most importantly Python’s indentation based syntax allows developers to write highly structured and readable code.

Fast and Maintainable Compared to Other Languages

In comparison with other compiled languages, Python is faster, more structured and more maintainable.

About the Book

This book is aimed towards providing in-depth yet simple insight into Python programming language. The book is geared towards beginner as well as advanced readers. The book helps beginners get their feet wet with practical Python. On the other hand, it can be used by expert users as a reference to different basic and advanced Python concepts.

All the important Python concepts have been grouped into chapters. A chapter contains theoretical information about particular Python concepts along with their implementation in the form of Python script. To get the most of this book, readers are suggested to first thoroughly understand the concept and then practice the code.

What’s next?

In the next chapter we will set up the environment required to run python script. We will install different software needed to run the scripts in this book. Happy Coding!!!

Chapter 2

Environment Setup

In this chapter we will install the software that we are going to use to run our Python programs. There are several options available in this regard. You can simply install core Python and use a text editor like notepad to write Python programs. These programs can then be run via command line utilities. The other option is to install an Integrated Develop Environment (IDE) for Python. IDE provides a complete programming environment including Python installation, Editors and debugging tools. Most of the advanced programmers take the IDE route for Python development. We are also going to take the same route.

Anaconda is the IDE that we are going to use throughout this book. Anaconda is light, easy to install and comes with variety of development tools. Anaconda has its own command line utility to install third party software. And the good thing is that with Anaconda, you don’t have to separately install Python environment.

Downloading and Installing Anaconda

Follow these steps to download and install anaconda. In this section we will show the process of installing Anaconda for windows. The installation process remains almost same for Linux and Mac.

1-  Go to the following URL https://www.anaconda.com/download/

2-  You will be presented with the following webpage. Select Python 3.6 version as this is currently the latest version of Python. Click the Download button to download the executable file. It takes 2-3 minutes to download the file depending upon the speed of your internet.

3-  Once the executable file is downloaded, go to the download folder and run the executable. The name of the executable file should be similar to Anaconda3-5.1.0-Windows-x86_64. When you run the file you will see installation wizard like the one in the following screenshot. Click Next button.

4-  License Agreement dialogue box will appear. Read the license agreement and Click I Agree button.

5-  From the Select Installation Type dialogue box, check the Just Me radio button and click Next button as shown in the following