Python Code Walkthroughs
O'Reilly Media's Top Python Trainer Reveals The Rarely-Discussed "Secrets" He And Other Elite Python Pros Used At Not One, But TWO Silicon Valley Unicorns
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Dear fellow Python fan,
Did you know there are more-or-less secret coding strategies employed by the most exceptional software development teams in the world?
They are "secret" not because of any conspiracy. No one is trying to hide them from you. Nothing like that.
In fact, the world's top Pythonistas would absolutely LOVE to share 100% of this knowledge with you...
But for practical reasons, they cannot.
You see, these "secrets" go beyond knowledge of the Python language itself. Beyond the features, the syntax, the idioms, and even best-practice design patterns.
Rather, these "secrets" are for coding in an environment where you are:
- Innovatively pushing the boundaries of what is possible,
- Have gobs of sometimes-conflicting requirements constantly screaming for your attention, with
- Constantly looming deadlines to "get it done" so you can move on to the next task that was due yesterday...
All While Trying To Stay Happy, Productive And Sane!
And the secret is in the "how":
- HOW do you decide what is "good enough", so it does not come back to bite you?
- HOW do you choose the time, attention, and effort you should put into a task before you move on?
- HOW do you balance 'code quality' factors like readability, maintainability, conciseness, test coverage... with the urgency to simply get the task done?
For those who DO figure it out, they mainly do it by finding a great mentor...
But as you know, finding the right mentor requires a LOT of luck.
That is why Powerful Python has developed a full course for Python professionals, called:
Python Code Walkthroughs
"This is rich stuff! I can actually FEEL myself learning... Thanks for making this knowledge available at such an amazing price. This is exactly what I've been looking for to bridge the gap from practitioner to programmer."
Michael Murphy, California, USA
My name is Aaron Maxwell. A few years back, I partnered with O'Reilly Media to develop a full and comprehensive curriculum for advanced Python...
And together with O'Reilly, I ultimately taught this curriculum to over 10,000 Python professionals worldwide...
In nearly every engineering domain, country and culture!
As you can imagine, this gave me a deep understanding of what Python pros struggle with learning.
An I wanted to cover the "gaps" that are usually left out of most courses, and usually learned the hard way, on the job.
And so I made Python Code Walkthroughs...
A collection of high-impact code review videos, each shining a spotlight on a code snippet, class, or short computer program...
Pulled from REAL professional software solving complex, real-world, production-grade problems...
Written by an experienced software engineer and skilled, world-class Pythonista...
With the author going through line by line, narrating in careful detail not just how it works, but WHY it was designed that way, and how it fits in the larger application.
Like having a senior Pythonista as your personal mentor!
"In Code Walkthroughs, you'll see everything from methods and libraries you might not have used to design concepts that can give you ideas for your own professional work (or personal projects). I especially appreciated the discussions about the trade-offs between implementation details or code robustness and time."
Kurt Klein, Python developer
What You Learn
- Nuanced discussions of the trade-offs experienced Python developers make every day... the "secrets" that are rarely discussed outside of close mentoring relationships
- Real-world demonstrations on how to seamlessly weave scalability into your code
- Sidestepping "memory bottlenecks" that threaten to shove your performance off a cliff
- How to "cheat" around Python's "only one constructor" rule
- Examples of "warts" that you want to deliberately leave in your code, and how doing so lets you focus on bigger and better things
- Creating compelling convenience methods to make integrating with the rest of your application easy peasy
- Delightful ways to use "magic methods" that will make your code impressively readable and clear
- Practical, powerful ways to work with one of the most important data formats on the planet today
- How to create a "helper" tool that's quick to code up, easy to improve, and performs valuable, useful tasks in a dozen lines of main-block code
- A relentless parade of demos of weaving multiple advanced Python features together in explosively powerful ways
- A relentless parade of demos of weaving multiple advanced Python features together in explosively powerful ways
- An example of creating command-line tools leveraging powerful shortcuts for working with files
- Sober-headed discussions of practical "get it done" trade-offs vs. ivory tower purity
- The remarkable, surprising power that can come from deliberately restricting your code
- An object life-cycle "hack" for automating resource cleanup actions
- Solidly grounded points on readability trade-offs
- Discerning when code documentation is CRITICAL rather than a "nice to have"
- Using internal "one-shot" functions to exponentially improve code clarity
- The psychology of code-level UX, and how it unlocks your inner "elite Pythonista"
- Creating robust data privacy in a scalable, way
- How to use "internal state" techniques to turn a slow, plodding two-pass algorithm into speedy-fast one-pass
- Leveraging built-in Python scalability upgrade data processing throughput
- What a rarely used magic method tells us about the human mind (and how it relates to refactoring)
- An important lesson about self-sufficiency as a developer... and how to avoid the fate of eternally mediocre coders who never learn it
- Priceless skills for analyzing code "out of context"
- A simple one-line trick you can stick almost anywhere in your code... that will leave the worst kinds of "submarine" bugs fully exposed and defenseless
"The course also made a sincere effort to help me understand decision making processes that went into its construction. This helped me to understand the costs and benefits of certain approaches...
Another gap in my knowledge is connecting several concepts into a single program. These Code Walkthroughs are invaluable for that purpose. I can clearly see how class concepts are being used in a production setting."
Professor Alfa Ibrahim Yansane, UC San Francisco
Course Videos
1 A Powerful Abstraction (23 minutes)
2. Special Command-Line Tool (32 minutes)
3. Browser Automation Helper Class(46 minutes)
4. EmailAnonymizer class (14 minutes)
5. A Special Method (19 minutes)
Bonus #1: The "Christmas Birthday" Video (52 minutes)
Bonus #2: Recordings of Live Q&A Session (Nearly 2 hours total)
"From Code Walkthroughs, my understanding of classes has increased considerably. I really like the way the various pieces of code are explained and the reasons why the code has been structured that way. So yes, I really liked the Code Walkthroughs :-)"
Bauke de Kroon, Cloud Architect, The Netherlands
Detailed Module Descriptions
Walkthrough Video #1:
A Powerful Abstraction
This first video highlights a single Python class pulled from an internal marketing analytics application...
A class representing an important and powerful abstraction in the code.
This remarkable class uses several advanced features of Python, interlocked in elegant, sophisticated ways.
And in the first video the developer who created it goes through each part, line by line, method by method…
Detailing how this class operates in the context of the larger application…
Using class methods, the iterator protocol, and magic methods for "hooking" into Python's normal syntax…
And intriguingly, the psychology around WHY this class arose…
How the developer recognized the “hole” in his code this class would fill, and the need for it in the first place...
This elegant class, only a few dozen lines long, demonstrates remarkable complexity and Pythonic power. Of course, this is just the first video…
Walkthrough Video #2:
Special Command-Line Tool
Next up is a command-line tool. A utility program specifically created for customer source information extraction.
Again: ALL of these examples come from REAL production software systems.
The line-by-line analysis of this program illustrates important command-line UX factors...
While the "guts" of the program give the opportunity to use one of Python's most underappreciated data structures...
As well as teaching some practical trade-offs that come with processing CSV files... One of the most common and important data-interchange formats on the planet.
But digging "under the surface", where the talented top-tier developer who created it explains how he designed it for SCALABILITY...
Gracefully handling CSV files that are megabytes, gigabytes, even TERABYTES in size...
All with a shockingly small tiny memory footprint...
And explaining how this program is designed for PERFORMANCE. With the deliberate choices made in terms of architecture, idioms, and the trade-offs in between.
This little program for big data is a perfect demonstration of why Python is so valuable for creating useful real-world tools.
Bringing us to the next nugget...
Walkthrough Video #3:
Browser Automation Helper Class
Here's an insightful analysis and breakdown of another important class...
A key component of a web-browser automation tool, originally used to download lead-generation reports from a vendor's website.
Another powerful example of a realistic abstraction in a complex codebase...
Yet revealing completely different from the other "walkthrough" videos.
And thus, teaching exciting new lessons, including safe clean-up of filesystem operations...
And more importantly, explaining the thinking BEHIND it.
The developer mindset that creates robust, secure code that avoids unexpected bugs and failure modes in the first place.
This one includes demonstrations of how to use code documentation the "right" way, in the context of a complex codebase...
And how to precisely define the "boundaries" under which code can operate well and safely.
Plus how using internal functions improves readability and maintainability, in a real-world use case... Again, no toy code here...
And showing you a powerful encapsulation "trick" you may never have even seen before.
Walkthrough Videos #4
And More
Other videos include:
An "email anonymizer" program, created to privacy-protect the production data used in video #2...
A breakdown of a single interesting method, from a class in a marketing-automation program... And the lessons it can teach us about quickly understanding code with incomplete information..
And please note I have added content to this course SEVERAL time since its first release.
I plan to do so again. And when you purchase Python Code Walkthroughs today, you will receive every FUTURE update and addition as well.
You also receive several exciting BONUSES, including:
Bonus #1:
The "Christmas Birthday" Video
This is a special "gift" video I made for a small group of select students a few years ago...
In fact, I recorded, edited and uploaded this video on Christmas day...
Which also happens to be My birthday! Hence its nickname, the "Christmas Birthday" video.
While I made it as a special gift to a small select group, the feedback I got was so delightfully positive, I have decided to add it as a bonus to Python Code Walkthroughs.
Bonus #2:
Q&A Session Recordings
On a few occasions, I have done live "Q&A" sessions just for students of Python Code Walkthroughs.
In these live, interactive Zoom calls, we had a great time screen-sharing code from the Code Walkthroughs examples...
As I answered students' questions at length, and in depth.
These Q&A recordings are a treasure chest of learning, expanding on the lessons taught in the main videos...
Nearly two hours in total, so far. Included as a free bonus when you get Python Code Walkthroughs today.