Ever wanted to learn how to program, or improve your existing programming skills and knowledge? Do you learn better by watching something get done and having it explained while you watch? We've created these videos to do just that, to give you the sense of being behind a teacher while they gently guide you through the material. Python has a library for pretty much any programming problem and we hope, over time, to introduce you to many of the best. So join our club and start a programming adventure.
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10 series for you now, more every week
Club ShowMeDo has been running since February of 2008. Our mission is to provide some of the videos viewers have been requesting and pass on some know-how we think will be useful. The emphasis is on fast, fluid acquisition of knowledge. We aim to save you large amounts of time.You'll get immediate access to all the following videos and you can download the videos for off-line viewing too. You can also talk to fellow Club members in the ShowMeDo Learners Group to save you even more time when you're stuck.
Python has many datatypes, you'll recognise some from other languages and some may be new to you. In this long series I give 5-10 minute demonstrations of each of the major data-types and containers, along with some discussion of variables and printing.
As you might expect Python makes database programming a relatively painless affair. The Python database API (DBAPI) provides a 'database neutral' programming interface for databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MS-SQL and Oracle, among others, based on the structured query language SQL. In this series we show you what the DBAPI is, a bit of how it works, and how it can be used to connect Python programs to SQL databases. We demonstrate how existing databases can be accessed and used and how Python can create new databases, add tables and populate those tables with data.
If you're coming to Python from a different language then you'll want to know how the syntax looks. If you're new to programming then you'll probably want an idea of what to expect too! Here I give you a high-level view of Python's code and common functions and I link to examples from Java, C and C++ to provide comparisons.
Google App Engine (GAE) promises to remove some of the hassles from starting and maintaining a web-site. Potentially difficult, technical jobs such as server, database and user-identity management are made considerably easier. Google has chosen Python as its initial application development language, allowing new users to leverage the considerable power and usability of such frameworks as Django or Pylons. This series will introduce the GAE, focussing on the use of its Python SDK and webapp framework. It aims to give good idea of GAE's workflow, assumes limited programming knowledge and, while not an introduction to Python, will try to explain most of the code used in a gentle walkthrough.
Learn to talk to COM-enabled applications on Windows using the open-source pyWin32 (by Mark Hammond). Here we use Python to control Excel, then we create a Python-based COM server which we call from inside Excel. Possible applications - use Excel as a charting tool, build a scientific/research interface to your Python code, communicate with any COM application, build your own COM servers.
CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is one of the simplest ways to start writing dynamic web applications. It is viewed as quite an "old" way to write web applications, but it does not require the understanding of too many different technologies. It's therefore perfect for writing small one-shot web scripts that are essentially web front-ends to shell scripts.
Learn how to use twill (a Python+shell web browser) and nosetests to unit-test your website as if you were using the website. With this technique you can reliably test your site whilst you develop.
Want to learn wxPython? Want a fully-worked example which leads you through to a working program? Want some exercises (with solutions!) which test your growing knowledge? Here we build a wxPython-based Image Viewer and at the end of the series you'll be able to build your own wxPython applications.
Aimed at Python Beginner Programmers, this fully-worked series builds a complete application that utilises a User Interface, the comma-separated-values (csv) module, reads and writes files, handles exceptions and gives useful error messages, uses test-driven development, nosetests and refactoring. We do all of this inside Wingware's excellent Wing IDE.
See PyDev and IDLE in action, program and debug code and then learn bullet-proof coding by unit-testing with nosetests.
For editing we use IDLE, PyDev and the Wing IDE in our videos to show different ways of writing Python code. You can follow the tutorials using any standard text editor.
What's coming next?
- build a personal-information manager using wxPython and persistent storage
- teaching Python for new programmers
- building CGI and Django websites
- more wxPython examples including a Twitter client
- Python Imaging Library (PIL) to manipulate images from code
- a flickr photo-viewer using wxPython
- using Python for science (including charting)
- writing a simple IM client
- using beautifulsoup for web screen-scraping
Why are we doing this?
We're passionate about sharing our hard-won knowledge - you get to benefit from our years of experience as we quickly teach you great new skills.
By subscribing you help to support our time and that lets us create more free videos about cool Python tools. Not only do you help us to benefit the entire community, you also benefit as we get to keep the site Ad-free.
Does the subscriber-only archive just grow?
Rather than let the archive grow indefinitely we think it is more beneficial to the community if the older Subscriber-only videos are released for free into the general ShowMeDo pool. These releases will typically occur after a year or so.
By Subscribing you get access to all of the latest Subscriber-only videos and you'll be supporting our efforts to better-document great Python tools which benefits the whole community.
Money back guarantee?
We offer a money-back guarantee. If you're not happy with the tutorials that we produce then get in contact and tell us that you want a refund on the remainder of your subscription - we'll sort it out quickly.
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