Ultimate Python study guide

Ultimate Python study guide for newcomers and professionals alike. 🐍 🐍 🐍

print("Ultimate Python study guide")

Motivation

I created a GitHub repo to share what I've learned about core Python over the past 5+ years of using it as a college graduate, an employee at large-scale companies and an open-source contributor of repositories like Celery and Full Stack Python. I look forward to seeing more people learn Python and pursue their passions through it. 🎓

Goals

Here are the primary goals of creating this guide:

🏆 Serve as a resource for Python newcomers who prefer to learn hands-on. This repository has a collection of standalone modules which can be run in an IDE like PyCharm and in the browser like Repl.it. Even a plain old terminal will work with the examples. Most lines have carefully crafted comments which guide a reader through what the programs are doing step-by-step. Users are encouraged to modify source code anywhere as long as the main routines are not deleted and run successfully after each change.

🏆 Serve as a pure guide for those who want to revisit core Python concepts. Only builtin libraries are leveraged so that these concepts can be conveyed without the overhead of domain-specific concepts. As such, popular open-source libraries and frameworks (i.e. sqlalchemy, requests, pandas) are not installed. However, reading the source code in these frameworks is inspiring and highly encouraged if your goal is to become a true Pythonista.

Table of contents

📚 = External resource, 🍰 = Beginner topic, 🤯 = Advanced topic

1. About Python
   • Overview: What is Python (:books:, :cake:)
   • Design Philosophy: The Zen of Python (:books:)
   • Style Guide: Style Guide for Python Code (:books:, :exploding_head:)
   • Data Model: Data model (:books:, :exploding_head:)
2. Syntax
   • Variable: Built-in literals (:cake:)
   • Expression: Numeric operations (:cake:)
   • Conditional: if | if-else | if-elif-else (:cake:)
   • Loop: for-loop | while-loop (:cake:)
   • Function: def | lambda (:cake:)
3. Data Structures
   • List: List operations (:cake:)
   • Tuple: Tuple operations
   • Set: Set operations
   • Dict: Dictionary operations (:cake:)
   • Comprehension: list | tuple | set | dict
   • String: String operations (:cake:)
4. Classes
   • Basic class: Basic definition (:cake:)
   • Abstract class: Abstract definition
   • Exception class: Exception definition
   • Iterator class: Iterator definition | yield (:exploding_head:)
5. Advanced
   • Decorator: contextlib | wraps (:exploding_head:)
   • Metaclass: Metaclass definition (:exploding_head:)
   • Method Resolution Order: mro (:exploding_head:)
   • Asyncio: async | await (:exploding_head:)
   • Weak reference: weakref (:exploding_head:)
   • Benchmark: cProfile | pstats (:exploding_head:)

Additional resources

👔 = Interview resource, 🧪 = Code samples, 🧠 = Project ideas

GitHub repositories

Keep learning by reading from other well-regarded resources.

• TheAlgorithms/Python (:necktie:, :test_tube:)
• faif/python-patterns (:necktie:, :test_tube:)
• geekcomputers/Python (:test_tube:)
• karan/Projects (:brain:)
• vinta/awesome-python (:brain:)
• MunGell/awesome-for-beginners (:brain:)

Interactive practice

Keep practicing so that your coding skills don't get rusty.

• leetcode.com (:necktie:)
• hackerrank.com (:necktie:)
• codesignal.com (:necktie:)
• exercism.io
• projecteuler.net