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No Starch Press

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

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Description

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 ‏ : ‎ 7.01 x 1.26 x 9.25 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #108,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #43 in Microsoft Programming (Books) #53 in Introductory & Beginning Programming #69 in Python Programming


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • Surprising book. Contained many things that benefit me in programming.
Format: Paperback
Nice book. Just joined the phyton class. This is the book where I referred too. Just the beggining.
Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2026 by Kamaludin Abdul Rahman
    • Such a fantastic intro to python book!
Format: Paperback
I bought this as required course material for my college course. As someone with zero computer programming experience, it has been invaluable to quickly learn the basic concepts of Python. The practical applications made me personally excited about learning Python. I'm still reading through it and look forward to reading what Al has to teach. I've even substituted some time I typically block out for video games to study this instead! 6 weeks into studying basic concepts in chapter 1-6 and chapter 13 on working with MS Excel using OpenPyXL and I've already written a program that automates a major task at work saving me and my co-workers several hours each a week. If you don't know anything about Python, please buy this book. I love that it's available free online to anyone which makes me even more willing to support buying this paperback copy. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2024 by Jordan
    • My sixth book from No Starch Press, not disappointed.
Format: Paperback
I have six books from this company now, three on Linux and three on Python. All are excellent additions to any library. The material they present continues to be easy to understand with every new book I buy from them. Coding is NOT easy, there's a lot of stuff to learn and tons that you've got to commit to memory. These books make the process enjoyable, and they use practical examples that make it a lot easier to understand things like the flow of logic within statements. Allow me to give a little context: I started with computers in the 80's when I was a kid. BASIC was all I had access to, fun, but not a great start. My first PC came along and I learned DOS, despite the mostly crappy documentation. Linux came along at the end of the 90's and, while it was a great OS back then, documentation held it back on the desktop. Best I could do was get it to boot, so Windows was the only choice for a couple decades. Flash forward to the present, and I've ditched Windows completely, picked up a couple books (I don't yet own a book on Linux NOT published by No Starch) and I do better now with Linux than I ever did with Windows. Linux documentation quality is also light-years beyond what it was in the 90's, too. I spent a month on Mint and went straight to Arch. Things have changed THAT much. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2021 by Detroit Customer
    • Good Projects, but Not an Ideal Book for a True Beginner
Format: Paperback
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 17, 2020 by OB1Jakobi
    • Some Additional Resources
Format: Paperback
I'm not new to Python at this point so I have a slightly different take on this book. The premise is that you've never programmed before and you're looking for some life shortcuts that you can do using the Python language. Here's the thing. It's not a complete waste for someone who is familiar (but not advanced). When I was going through this, I got a good explanation of some useful modules that I didn't even know existed. I especially like the pyinputplus module (which was actually created by the author) and put it to immediate use (and saved myself some serious frustration). If you've been using Python for years, you probably aren't going to get much out of this book. But if you are either a beginner or have familiarity but are not considered "advanced" yet, you may find some useful information in here. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2021 by Some Guy
    • Easy-to-read Python book with many practical code examples!
Automate the Boring Stuff with Python is an easy-to-read and quick-to-apply Python book with many practical program examples. Thanks, Al! I didn't do any programming other than simple automation shell scripts after graduation. This summer, I wanted to help my interns build a new MVP (minimum viable product). I was keen to develop some automation tools to help my customers control their cameras. I am glad that I took action to learn and code in Python! I was lucky to find "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python"! The book cover is eye-catching. The preface is clear about what readers can achieve from the book. The code examples and quizzes are very useful and practical, such as how to find information using Regular Expressions, send text messages with Twilio, and draw text on images. I applied them to build my first Python-based MVP! Programming is a creative activity. I am happy to create Python tools to help me automate boring and very boring tasks! I want to go further! I continue my Python journey with "Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python"! ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2023 by Andre Cheung
    • Excellent introductory Python Programming Book
Format: Paperback
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.
    • Easy to read
Format: Paperback
I took a coding class using this as its textbook. I found it easy to read and easy to understand.
Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2026 by D. Provenzano

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