"Python Crash Course by Eric Matthes" - Reading Journal 3

If you are new to Python and want to quickly ramp-up to become no non-sense developer in Python, you might want to read this post, these posts that are related to this book and probably all of these posts to become Python Super Star.

This post gives an overview of Chapters 7, 8 and 9

Chapter 7: User Inputs and while Loops

This chapter covers how to get input from the user, how to convert it to numerical values if you need it. It covers while loop, how to exit from the loop using flag, break, continue and how to avoid infinite loops. It gives a couple of examples of when and how to use while loops with lists and dictionaries. This chapter is extremely light for a developer and might be interesting to someone who is new to programming. You should complete this in less than 30 minutes including the exercises.

Chapter 8: Functions
The chapter covers quite a lot of ground with functions, modules and a bit on PEP8 styling guidelines with respect to functions. You will see how to define a function, without and with parameters, returning value, keyword argument, optional values, default values for parameters, passing a variable number of arguments, passing a variable number of arguments with keywords, importing a module, importing a function from a module, importing all the functions from a modules and aliases for module/functions with sufficient examples. The chapter closes with the styling guidelines from PEP8. An awesome chapter and I really liked this chapter. This chapter might take a little longer including exercises and reflection. It is best to pause here for some time to reflect to ensure you got everything. After completing this chapter, you will really feel that Python is powerful. Kudos to the author for giving us a wonderful chapter.

Chapter 9: Classes
Like the previous chapter, this chapter too covers very interesting paradigm of Object Orientation using classes and objects. If someone is new to programming, I recommend for a slow reading solving all the exercises and trying out all the examples. It is worth the effort. Ensure that you understand the essence of the chapter (classes, objects in OO paradigm) before moving further. If you already know another OO language like C++ or Java, it should be a cakewalk for you. This chapter talks about creating classes, __init__ method, self, creating objects, accessing attributes, calling methods of the objects, subclassing/inheritance, overriding, importing classes and styling of classes. Another wonderful chapter with real-world examples.

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