Learn Python the Hard Way, 5th Edition (2023-2024)

Yes, it's Python 3! Full Release Date Feb 1, 2024 The latest version of Learn Python the Hard Way teaches you the basics of computer programming from nothing, but focusing on the tools Data Scientists use. Data Science is the most popular way Python is used today, and the tools Data Scientists use are very friendly to beginners. This course will assume you know nothing, so even if you don't want to do Data Science this course will get you on the right path with Python.

UPDATE: All exercises are written and should work. Official release date of the book from Pearson will be Feb, 2024. Videos will be published from Jan 15, 2024 onward. If you find errors let me know at help@learncodethehardway.com.

Course Contents

This course contains the following modules and lessons. Every course offers free samples of the first 10 lessons so you can decide if you want to take the course, and excerpts from all lessons after that.

• 0: Gearing Up
  
  This exercise has no code.
• 1: A Good First Program
  
  If you skipped Exercise 0, then you are not doing this book right.
• 2: Comments and Pound Characters
  
  Comments are very important in your programs.
• 3: Numbers and Math
  
  Every programming language has some kind of way of doing numbers and math.
• 4: Variables and Names
  
  Now you can print things with print and you can do math.
• 5: More Variables and Printing
  
  Now we'll do even more typing of variables and printing them out.
• 6: Strings and Text
  
  While you have been writing strings, you still do not know what they do.
• 7: Combining Strings
  
  Now we are going to do a bunch of exercises where you just type code in and make it run.
• 8: Formatting Strings Manually
  
  We will now see how to do a more complicated formatting of a string.
• 9: Multi-line Strings
  
  By now you should realize the pattern for this book is to use more than one exercise to teach you something new.
• 10: Escape Codes in Strings
  
  In Exercise 9 I threw you some new stuff, just to keep you on your toes.
• 11: Asking People Questions
  
  Now it is time to pick up the pace.
• 12: An Easier Way to Prompt
  
  When you typed input() you were typing the ( and ) characters, which are parenthesis characters.
• 13: Parameters, Unpacking, Variables
  
  We're now going to take a quick detour into the world of the Terminal (aka PowerShell) version of python.
• 14: Prompting and Passing
  
  Let's do an exercise that uses argv and input together to ask the user something specific.
• 15: Reading Files
  
  You know how to get input from a user with input or argv.
• 16: Reading and Writing Files
  
  If you did the Study Drills from the last exercise, you should have seen all sorts of commands (methods/functions) you can give to files.
• 17: More Files
  
  Now let's do a few more things with files.

• 18: Names, Variables, Code, Functions
  
  Big title, right? I am about to introduce you to the function! Dum dum dah! Every programmer will go on and on about functions and all the different ideas about how they work and what they do, but I will give you the simplest explanation you can use right now.
• 19: Functions and Variables
  
  You're now going to combine functions with what you know of variables from previous exercises.
• 20: Functions and Files
  
  Remember your checklist for functions, then do this exercise paying close attention to how functions and files can work together to make useful stuff.
• 21: Functions Can Return Something
  
  You have been using the = character to name variables and set them to numbers or strings.
• 22: Strings, Bytes, and Character Encodings
  
  To do this exercise you'll need to download a text file that I've written named `languages.
• 23: Introductory Lists
  
  Most programming languages have some way to store data inside the computer.
• 24: Introductory Dictionaries
  
  In this exercise we'll use the same data from the previous exercise on lists and use it to learn about Dictionaries or dicts.
• 25: Dictionaries and Functions
  
  In this exercise we're going to do something fun by combining functions with dicts.
• 26: Dictionaries and Modules
  
  In this exercise you're going to explore how the dict works with modules.
• 27: The 5 Simple Rules to the Game of Code
  
  This exercise is intended to be studied periodically while you study the next exercises.
• 28: Memorizing Logic
  
  Today is the day you start learning about logic.
• 29: Boolean Practice
  
  The logic combinations you learned from the last exercise are called "Boolean" logic expressions.
• 30: What If
  
  Here is the next script of Python you will enter, which introduces you to the if-statement.
• 31: Else and If
  
  In the last exercise you worked out some if-statements and then tried to guess what they are and how they work.
• 32: Making Decisions
  
  In the first half of this book you mostly just printed out things called functions, but everything was basically in a straight line.
• 33: Loops and Lists
  
  You should now be able to do some programs that are much more interesting.
• 34: While Loops
  
  Now to totally blow your mind with a new loop, the while-loop.
• 35: Branches and Functions
  
  You have learned if-statements, functions, and lists.
• 36: Designing and Debugging
  
  Now that you know if-statements, I'm going to give you some rules for for-loops and while-loops that will keep you out of trouble.
• 37: Symbol Review
  
  It's time to review the symbols and Python words you know and to try to pick up a few more for the next few lessons.

• 38: Beyond Jupyter for Windows
  
  Jupyter is a great environment for interactive analysis.
• 39: Beyond Jupyter for macOS/Linux
  
  Jupyter is a great environment for interactive analysis.
• 40: Advanced Developer Tools
  
  This exercise is all about avoiding "footguns.
• 41: A Project Skeleton
  
  This exercise is completely optional, but useful if you want to create your own package to use in other projects.
• 42: Doing Things to Lists
  
  You have learned about lists.
• 43: Doing Things to Dictionaries
  
  You are now going to learn about the Dictionary data structure in Python.
• 44: From Dictionaries to Objects
  
  You should review the following exercises before doing this one: Exercise 24 Introductory Dictionaries to refresh your understanding of Dictionaries.
• 45: Basic Object Oriented Programming
  
  In Exercise 44 you learned how to use a function to create special dict containers with functions attached to them.
• 46: Inheritance and Advanced OOP
  
  An important concept that you have to understand is the difference between a class and an object.
• 47: Basic Object-Oriented Analysis and Design
  
  I'm going to describe a process to use when you want to build something using Python, specifically with object-oriented programming (OOP).
• 48: Inheritance Versus Composition
  
  In the fairy tales about heroes defeating evil villains there's always a dark forest of some kind.
• 49: You Make a Game
  
  You need to start learning to feed yourself.
• 50: Automated Testing
  
  This final exercise of Module 3 will teach you how to create automated tests.

• 51: What is Data Munging?
  
  At this point in the course you know Python.
• 52: Scraping Data from the Web
  
  The two most popular uses of Python are Data Science and Web Scraping because web scraping typically feeds data to your data science pipeline.
• 53: Getting Data from APIs
  
  In this exercise you'll access the Application Programmer Interface (API) I use for my learncodethehardway.
• 54: Data Conversion with Pandas
  
  We'll now explore Pandas(https://pandas.
• 55: How to Read Documentation (featuring Pandas)
  
  This exercise is going to teach two very important skills.
• 56: Using Only Pandas
  
  In this exercise you'll take the mess of random scripts you've made and create one clean tool that uses only Pandas for the entire process.
• 57: The SQL Crash Course
  
  You can't do science without data, and the most widely used language for storing and managing data is SQL.
• 58: SQL Normalization
  
  In the previous exercise we explored SQL basics using the European Central Bank's(https://www.
• 59: SQL Relationships
  
  Our final exercise is going to cover the concept of relations in SQL.
• 60: Advice from An Even Older Programmer
  
  Imagine it's 1820 and you want a nice portrait of your mother.