“A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste.” And yet waste them we do, most often in two ways: First in Learning, where we accumulate knowledge without applying it and fall down the rabbit hole of endless programming tutorials, ebooks, and courses that you only get part-way through and have nothing to show for afterwards. […]
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To Learn Programming, Make Mistakes
There are two types of mistakes: intentional and unintentional. The unintentional mistakes are the ones classical musicians make, hitting an E-flat when they meant to hit an E. We often don’t welcome these. But you can learn from them, analyze why they happened, and take precautions against future occurences. Like sailing a boat that springs […]
What does the future hold for Casual Coders?
One day at the office I was given the task of collecting education data from a government website. There was no API, no option to export the data. Just endless, poorly-formatted tables. My task was to copy and paste the data, cell by cell, from the website into a spreadsheet, for hours on end. Much […]
Getting to Know the Spyder IDE for Python
Whether you’re a beginner programmer, casual coder, data analyst/scientist, or anyone else that uses Python, I’d recommend you at least check out Spyder, among other IDEs. Granted, it may not the best choice if you’re a full-time Python developer. But otherwise it has a lot to offer with its blend of intuitive, beginner-friendly design and […]
Some Good Python IDEs for Casual Coders
There are lots of lists out there on good code editors and integrated development environments (IDEs) for programming in Python. But those articles are often aimed at full-time developers. In this article I want to show you the three IDEs I recommend to Python programmers that are a bit more casual in their programming, each […]
Easily Build and Deploy Your First Python Web App
These days you can make your very own web app for free, in pure Python, with a minimal amount of code. The app we’re going to build is under 100 lines total. Not only that, the entire process, from coding and styling to hosting and embedding, can be surprisingly straightforward once you’ve seen an example. […]
Learn Python, Java, and C in 3 minutes (even if you’re illiterate, arthritic, and deceased)
“Learn C in 7 Days!” “Learn Java in 24 Hours!” “Learn Python in 90 Minutes!” You’ve probably seen this before, the programmer’s version of 8 Minute Abs. It’s pretty much always been around in all kinds of books, courses, presentations, videos, and blogs. The time span generally ranges from weeks to minutes, with the shortest […]
Coming Up with Programming Projects You Actually Care About
The best way to learn is often to do, to work on real-world projects. If you want to learn HTML and CSS, build a simple website. If you want to learn to play piano, commit to playing a song at an upcoming recital. If you want to learn about regime change, make some molotov cocktails. […]
Using Firefox Extensions with Selenium in Python
Firefox is my personal favorite browser, due in part to all of the great extensions available for it. When you try running Firefox with Selenium, however, you’ll probably find that Firefox is missing the extensions you have installed and normally use when browsing. Luckily, there’s a quick and easy way to install all your favorite […]
Using Headless Firefox with Selenium in Python
Headless Firefox and regular Firefox have the same capabilities, and running them with Selenium is a very similar process. The difference is that Headless Firefox does not generate any sort of user interface. In other words, no browser is visibly launched. If you happen to be web scraping with Selenium, it’s often helpful to see […]