Amazon's Book Piracy Problem

TLDR Amazon turns a blind eye towards book piracy. A cynical take is that they do it to line the pocketbooks.

Gaming the system

Why would the world's largest book marketplace encourage piracy?

A shady side of Amazon rears its head and is the bane of book authors everywhere. This …

more ...

Announcing Effective Pandas

TLDR My new Pandas book, Effective Pandas, is released ebook here, physical book to follow soon.

You Wrote Another Pandas Book?

Yes, I wrote my third (or fourth, if you count Machine Learning Pocket Reference) Pandas book. In 2016, I released Learning the Pandas Library, and in 2020 I released …

more ...

What is the best free course?

TLDR You need to have skin in the game and invest in yourself. If my courses are too expensive for your part of the world let me know what you can invest in yourself.

Blockage

Last week something new happened to me. I was blocked on Twitter. It has probably …

more ...

My New Course on TalkPython

Following the release of Illustrated Guide to Python 3, my friend Michael Kennedy approached me about creating a course for Talk Python. (In his concerted effort to wean people off of legacy Python) He wanted a course with all the new features of Python 3. We planned it out, and …

more ...

"Kickstarter for Python and Data Science Screencasts"

Down the Training Rabbit Hole

In the past few months I have been doing a bit of corporate training for MetaSnake. I have noticed a few things:

  • Programmers that have used Python in a work setting miss details that I consider "beginning" knowledge

  • Programmers that are new to Python keep …

more ...

"Using Decorators for Testing Screencast"

I made a screencast exploring one of Raymond Hettinger's tweets a while back. His 140 character exposition suggested that a student of his wanted to use decorators to unittest functions.

more ...

"Revisiting the ErgoDox"

I purchased and built an ErgoDox keyboard over a year ago. I thought it would be good to revisit that since I get asked questions about the keyboard every now and then.

What is an ErgoDox?

The ErgoDox is the Voltron of keyboards-a combination of open source hardware and software …

more ...

"Subway Map to Python"

Starting something new can be overwhelming and confusing. Where does one start? Where does one desire to go? Because Python (the language, standard library, ecosystem, community, and more) has a such a wide breadth of functionality, it can be even more daunting.

I have long been impressed by the abstract …

more ...

"Introducing 90% of Python Course"

In addition to some consulting work and catching the tail end of spring skiing, I've been working hard. Early next month I will be selling a course-90% of Python.

A course supplemented with both videos and exercises == HUGE win. I'm a visual learner... the videos help explain further and …

more ...