You Will Learn Python 3! Zed Shaw has perfected the world’s best system for learning Python 3. Follow it and you will succeed—just like the millions of beginners Zed has taught to date! You bring the discipline, commitment, and persistence; the author supplies everything else. In Learn Python 3 the Hard Way, you’ll learn Python by working through 52 brilliantly crafted exercises. Read them. Type their code precisely. (No copying and pasting!) Fix your mistakes. Watch the programs run. As you do, you’ll learn how a computer works; what good programs look like; and how to read, write, and think about code. Zed then teaches you even more in 5+ hours of video where he shows you how to break, fix, and debug your code—live, as he’s doing the exercises. Install a complete Python environment Organize and write code Fix and break code Basic mathematics Variables Strings and text Interact with users Work with files Looping and logic Data structures using lists and dictionaries Program design Object-oriented programming Inheritance and composition Modules, classes, and objects Python packaging Automated testing Basic game development Basic web development It’ll be hard at first. But soon, you’ll just get it—and that will feel great! This course will reward you for every minute you put into it. Soon, you’ll know one of the world’s most powerful, popular programming languages. You’ll be a Python programmer. This Book Is Perfect For Total beginners with zero programming experience Junior developers who know one or two languages Returning professionals who haven’t written code in years Seasoned professionals looking for a fast, simple, crash course in Python 3

Table of Contents:
Preface xvii Acknowledgments xx Exercise 0: The Setup 2 macOS 2 Windows 3 Linux 4 Finding Things on the Internet 5 Warnings for Beginners 6 Alternative Text Editors 6 Exercise 1: A Good First Program 8 What You Should See 10 Study Drills 12 Common Student Questions 12 Exercise 2: Comments and Pound Characters 14 What You Should See 14 Study Drills 14 Common Student Questions 15 Exercise 3: Numbers and Math 16 What You Should See 17 Study Drills 17 Common Student Questions 17 Exercise 4: Variables and Names 20 What You Should See 21 Study Drills 21 Common Student Questions 21 Exercise 5: More Variables and Printing 24 What You Should See 24 Study Drills 25 Common Student Questions 25 Exercise 6: Strings and Text 26 What You Should See 27 Study Drills 27 Break It 27 Common Student Questions 27 Exercise 7: More Printing 28 What You Should See 28 Study Drills 29 Break It 29 Common Student Questions 29 Exercise 8: Printing, Printing 30 What You Should See 30 Study Drills 31 Common Student Questions 31 Exercise 9: Printing, Printing, Printing 32 What You Should See 32 Study Drills 33 Common Student Questions 33 Exercise 10: What Was That? 34 What You Should See 35 Escape Sequences 35 Study Drills 36 Common Student Questions 36 Exercise 11: Asking Questions 38 What You Should See 38 Study Drills 39 Common Student Questions 39 Exercise 12: Prompting People 40 What You Should See 40 Study Drills 40 Common Student Questions 41 Exercise 13: Parameters, Unpacking, Variables 42 Hold Up! Features Have Another Name 42 What You Should See 43 Study Drills 44 Common Student Questions 44 Exercise 14: Prompting and Passing 46 What You Should See 46 Study Drills 47 Common Student Questions 47 Exercise 15: Reading Files 48 What You Should See 49 Study Drills 49 Common Student Questions 50 Exercise 16: Reading and Writing Files 52 What You Should See 53 Study Drills 53 Common Student Questions 54 Exercise 17: More Files 56 What You Should See 56 Study Drills 57 Common Student Questions 57 Exercise 18: Names, Variables, Code, Functions 60 What You Should See 61 Study Drills 62 Common Student Questions 62 Exercise 19: Functions and Variables 64 What You Should See 65 Study Drills 65 Common Student Questions 65 Exercise 20: Functions and Files 68 What You Should See 69 Study Drills 69 Common Student Questions 69 Exercise 21: Functions Can Return Something 72 What You Should See 73 Study Drills 73 Common Student Questions 74 Exercise 22: What Do You Know So Far? 76 What You Are Learning 76 Exercise 23: Strings, Bytes, and Character Encodings 78 Initial Research 78 Switches, Conventions, and Encodings 80 Disecting the Output 82 Disecting the Code 82 Encodings Deep Dive 84 Breaking It 85 Exercise 24: More Practice 86 What You Should See 87 Study Drills 87 Common Student Questions 87 Exercise 25: Even More Practice 90 What You Should See 91 Study Drills 92 Common Student Questions 93 Exercise 26: Congratulations, Take a Test! 94 Common Student Questions 94 Exercise 27: Memorizing Logic 96 The Truth Terms 96 The Truth Tables 97 Common Student Questions 98 Exercise 28: Boolean Practice 100 What You Should See 102 Study Drills 102 Common Student Questions 102 Exercise 29: What If 104 What You Should See 104 Study Drills 105 Common Student Questions 105 Exercise 30: Else and If 106 What You Should See 107 Study Drills 107 Common Student Questions 107 Exercise 31: Making Decisions 108 What You Should See 109 Study Drills 109 Common Student Questions 109 Exercise 32: Loops and Lists 112 What You Should See 113 Study Drills 114 Common Student Questions 114 Exercise 33: While Loops 116 What You Should See 117 Study Drills 117 Common Student Questions 118 Exercise 34: Accessing Elements of Lists 120 Study Drills 121 Exercise 35: Branches and Functions 122 What You Should See 123 Study Drills 124 Common Student Questions 124 Exercise 36: Designing and Debugging 126 Rules for if-statements 126 Rules for Loops 126 Tips for Debugging 127 Homework 127 Exercise 37: Symbol Review 128 Keywords 128 Data Types 129 String Escape Sequences 130 Old Style String Formats 130 Operators 131 Reading Code 132 Study Drills 133 Common Student Questions 133 Exercise 38: Doing Things to Lists 134 What You Should See 135 What Lists Can Do 136 When to Use Lists 137 Study Drills 137 Common Student Questions 138 Exercise 39: Dictionaries, Oh Lovely Dictionaries 140 A Dictionary Example 141 What You Should See 142 What Dictionaries Can Do 143 Study Drills 144 Common Student Questions 144 Exercise 40: Modules, Classes, and Objects 146 Modules Are Like Dictionaries 146 What You Should See 150 Study Drills 150 Common Student Questions 151 Exercise 41: Learning to Speak Object-Oriented 152 Word Drills 152 Phrase Drills 152 Combined Drills 153 A Reading Test 153 Practice English to Code 155 Reading More Code 156 Common Student Questions 156 Exercise 42: Is-A, Has-A, Objects, and Classes 158 How This Looks in Code 159 About class Name(object) 161 Study Drills 161 Common Student Questions 161 Exercise 43: Basic Object-Oriented Analysis and Design 164 The Analysis of a Simple Game Engine 165 Top Down versus Bottom Up 169 The Code for “Gothons from Planet Percal #25” 170 What You Should See 176 Study Drills 176 Common Student Questions 177 Exercise 44: Inheritance versus Composition 178 What Is Inheritance? 178 The Reason for super() 183 Composition 184 When to Use Inheritance or Composition 185 Study Drills 185 Common Student Questions 186 Exercise 45: You Make a Game 188 Evaluating Your Game 188 Function Style 189 Class Style 189 Code Style 190 Good Comments 190 Evaluate Your Game 190 Exercise 46: A Project Skeleton 192 macOS/Linux Setup 192 Windows 10 Setup 194 Creating the Skeleton Project Directory 195 Testing Your Setup 197 Using the Skeleton 198 Required Quiz 198 Common Student Questions 198 Exercise 47: Automated Testing 200 Writing a Test Case 200 Testing Guidelines 202 What You Should See 202 Study Drills 203 Common Student Questions 203 Exercise 48: Advanced User Input 204 Our Game Lexicon 204 A Test First Challenge 206 What You Should Test 207 Study Drills 209 Common Student Questions 209 Exercise 49: Making Sentences 210 Match and Peek 210 The Sentence Grammar 211 A Word on Exceptions 211 The Parser Code 211 Playing with the Parser 214 What You Should Test 215 Study Drills 215 Common Student Questions 215 Exercise 50: Your First Website 216 Installing flask 216 Make a Simple “Hello World” Project 216 What’s Going On? 218 Fixing Errors 218 Create Basic Templates 219 Study Drills 221 Common Student Questions 221 Exercise 51: Getting Input from a Browser 224 How the Web Works 224 How Forms Work 226 Creating HTML Forms 227 Creating a Layout Template 229 Writing Automated Tests for Forms 230 Study Drills 232 Breaking It 232 Exercise 52: The Start of Your Web Game 234 Refactoring the Exercise 43 Game 234 Creating an Engine 239 Your Final Exam 241 Common Student Questions 242 Next Steps 244 How to Learn Any Programming Language 245 Advice from an Old Programmer 246 Appendix Command Line Crash Course 248 Introduction: Shut Up and Shell 248 The Setup 249 Paths, Folders, Directories (pwd) 253 If You Get Lost 255 Make a Directory (mkdir) 255 Change Directory (cd) 258 List Directory (ls) 261 Remove Directory (rmdir) 265 Moving Around (pushd, popd) 268 Making Empty Files (touch/New-Item) 271 Copy a File (cp) 272 Moving a File (mv) 275 View a File (less/more) 277 Stream a File (cat) 278 Removing a File (rm) 280 Exiting Your Terminal (exit) 282 Command Line Next Steps 283 Index 284