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No Starch Press

Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition: Practical Programming for Total Beginners

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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! Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ No Starch Press


Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 12, 2019


Edition ‏ : ‎ 2nd


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Print length ‏ : ‎ 592 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1593279922


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 29


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.43 pounds


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 1.25 x 9.25 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #23,222 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #26 in Introductory & Beginning Programming #50 in Python Programming #59 in Software Development (Books)


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • Good Projects, but Not an Ideal Book for a True Beginner
This book is intended for beginners, and really breaks down python in a very approachable manner. Despite that being said, I wouldn't recommend this book to a beginner. In the preface, the author mentions that this book uses many bad habits (or at the very least frowned upon habits), which is true. Many of coding examples are inefficient (which, to the author's credit, he acknowledges), and while the code might run, it's not going to be pretty. The projects look worthwhile, and those alone would be what I'd argue makes the book worth it. Many novice developers (as well as intermediate & advanced) can shrug off the idiosyncrasies that are presented in this book, but a person brand new to coding would likely misunderstand the material, ultimately leading to bad habits that'll be harder to unlearn. For a true beginner, I'd recommend the Python Crash Course book by the same publisher (No Starch Press). The fundamentals are clearly presented, and easy to understand. The foundation developed will be stronger, and you'll be less likely to develop bad habits, since most of the material is presented in a manner consistent with the python community (PEP). For example, the way variables and input functions are utilized between the two books are drastically different. In this book, user input and assignment is handled as follows: print('What's your name?') name = input() This is inefficient, and somewhat confusing, given that the alternative (as presented in Python Crash Course) is easier. In Python Crash Course, the same outcome is presented as follows: name = input("What is your name? ") The print statement asking for the user's name is excessive. If I'm trying to automate the boring stuff, I'm trying to trim the fat - not eat it. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2020 by OB1Jakobi
    • Really made for total beginners but can be used by seasoned developers as well
As this book makes very clear from the start, you don’t have to be a programmer to using this book. I’m a professional software engineer that just needed to learn some python automation for work and personal projects. This book helped me get there but I can see how this book really was tailored toward those who are not experienced in programming as it breaks down each section into consumable bits that would seem a bit tedious to someone like me but would be perfectly helpful to someone without programming experience. I was able to skim the first few chapters that teach the language as I’m already versed in programming and was able to glean pythons syntax style pretty quickly. It’s a simple yet elegant language especially compared to others that I use daily. The part about this book that got me all excited was the web scraping section. As a web developer, I deal with web pages a lot and it would be nice to have some scripts that would auto fill forms and interact with the web pages for me as I’m making code changes on the day to day. It would really make my job—even as a developer—super easy, and it has. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2020 by Levi Gonzales
    • I am sure it will be a very good book
Review Image by H2O H2O
Review Image by H2O H2O
Review Image by H2O H2O
Add this book to my small collection of Python books, and I am sure it will be a very good book, because this is not my first book for the same author (Al Sweigart), I have one more else, +the author provides all his books for free reading in the net, +there is an Udemy video course for this book by him. Hoping good reading, practicing, time with this book. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2019 by H2O H2O
    • Overall great book but not so great for actual programming beginners
While this is indeed a great book to get started with python projects I won’t say it’s a great book for total beginners. The author often uses coding concepts at the beginning of the book that are not explained until a later chapter leaving some beginners feeling overwhelmed with his programming methods. I am not a beginner though so understanding the basics was easy for me. The projects are really good for beginners too. Though I would recommend starting with Python Crash Course 2nd edition which goes through the fundamentals in greater detail and is more organized in its teaching approach (it also comes with projects at the end of the fundamental chapters). Overall good book just wished it was better organized for the “beginner” ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2020 by John
    • Love this practical Python Automation Book
I just bought couple of weeks before. Almost half of the book I have finished. The author explains very well and You can actually use his example in python and test them. I recommend people who looking to work as a Cloud Architect / AWS architect etc.
Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2020 by sarah
    • Decent book, but the online examples don’t seem to work
The posted links to the examples at author(dot)com all seem to be pretty much dead, at , least as of the last time I checked several days ago. Big demerit for this. There is a lot of typing for the purpose of entering the code. It would be great, or it would be great if the web site was not DOA, to just be able to download some of those files. Or ship the book with a CD, which doesn’t seem to be a thing any more. Anyhow, it is OK so far, but there are issues with the execution. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2020 by M. Mason
    • Excellent introductory Python Programming Book
I am working through this book and haven't finished it yet. I am a long term programmer having programmed for pay in Fortran for multiple jobs. I have been programming for over 30 years and learning an object oriented language requires a shift in perspective. So, I need little in algorithm development but details on the language features is important and capabilities to do the things that were simple in other languages is important to know how to do it in Python. This book is very complementary to the book Think Python, IMHO. I am working in Data Science and Machine Learning in particular and found that my ability to program in Python was lacking. So far this book has done a very good job familiarizing me with how to do certain critical things in Python. For Data Science having a section on web site data scraping is very important. I could just look how to do this. Also the data structures are much richer and varied. In Fortran you created any complexity in data structure yourself. I highly recommend this book for both new programmers and advanced programmers who need or want to learn Python. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2020 by Robin P.
    • Enjoyable read
Can’t say I enjoy reading technical book but I do it for learning. This one, is a gem. Funny, interesting relevant but not overwhelming. Good pace and got me started with Python better than googling.
Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2020 by Melody L

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