Learn Python 3 the Hard Way

https://learnpythonthehardway.org/python3/

by jscholes • 9 years ago

354 180 9 years ago

Python 3.x is the present and future of the language

A language I use daily and love, but one that will end up a dead-end I fear long-term. So much is going the way of speed now.

leblancfg• 9 years ago

I'm not sure I get that. Care to elaborate, and what use cases you have for it?

crdoconnor2• 9 years ago

I doubt that. Most of the cited competitors to python are either seriously flawed (e.g. go) or aren't really competing on the same turf (e.g. rust/haskell).

vonklaus3• 9 years ago

PG was talking about viaweb and dead languages in an interview I won't spend 10mins looking for; but he said something like:

Latin is a dead language and no one speaks it. Sure it is helpful for understanding other languages, but I never got that comparison because the computer always speaks it.

Certainly imperfect paraphrase, but the crux is that you can always code python, or lisp ect.

daveguy• 9 years ago

For those who want an alternative there is the community continuation of Python 2.8, called Tauthon:

https://www.naftaliharris.com/blog/why-making-python-2.8/

raverbashing4• 9 years ago

Those that go on this path will then find out they have gained nothing and only lost time by not updating their systems

crncosta2• 9 years ago

This guy has a very stranger way to promote his job.

He firstly said that Py3 sucks and he can't teach it... and now he is teaching it ;-)

[0] https://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/nopython3.html

iodbh• 9 years ago

Which turned into a big internet fight, and he changed his mind.

It's good to see people willing to change the way they do things, especially when that means publicly contradicting their former selves and with such an intense personality. It's oddly inspiring.

jhbadger2• 9 years ago

Also, when he wrote it was kind of true. A lot of things hadn't been ported to Python 3 yet and using it was asking for pain. Now finally we are in the opposite situation where many things are ending support for Python 2 and the easier route is Python 3.

baldfat2• 9 years ago

I think Zed was in the majority when it came to Py3. He kind of comes off as a jerk due to his personality, but I really like his approach and he always makes me think. I might not agree with him but he certainly is not boring. Looking at Pandas which is a R like library. Wes wrote his book in Py2 and did not have any desire for Py3.

I moved from Python mostly to using R, Racket and Haxe for my other side projects. This infighting just left a bad taste in my mouth and started seeing greener pastures, which for once in my life were in fact greener. I still love Python but I don't use it much due to community drama.

crncosta2• 9 years ago

Yes, it is a good thing!! I am glad he turn back from his previous decision. His book is nice.

mylons• 9 years ago

this comment is so erroneous. the fact that it's the top comment is really demonstrating how toxic HN has become as a community.

JshWright• 9 years ago

This guy has a very stranger way to promote his job.

Making and promoting a controversial rant, then a couple months later making news by reversing his position? That's pretty much Zed's m.o....

eliben• 9 years ago

If you try to ignore your bias against the person, it's actually admirable that someone can change their mind on a controversial topic instead of digging heels in stubbornly.

Tyr42• 9 years ago

For a detailed break down of why he was wrong with the "Case against Python 3", see here:

https://eev.ee/blog/2016/11/23/a-rebuttal-for-python-3/

raverbashing4• 9 years ago

I can't believe they actually have to debunk this

"Learning Python 3 is not in your best interest" REALLY? Learn Python 3 and you can work your way around Python 2 code if needed (except for Unicode problems which are tough even for people accustomed with Python 2 and which is a sore thumb that needs to be fixed hence Python 3)

Yes, I though Python 2 was good and Python 3 was irrelevant. That was 5 years ago though.

Reading stuff like "The fact that you can’t run Python 2 and Python 3 at the same time"? Really? Fake news anyone?

It is possible and several people do that. Period

arcaster• 9 years ago

My first thought when reading this. I still remember this guy's crusade against python 3.

takeda• 9 years ago

He is just dedicated to do things the "Hard Way"

dv35z3• 9 years ago

Related: I love this book's teaching style, and found it very much resonated with me - starting from zero, step by step, iteratively learning and building on previous lessons.

Can anyone suggest something similar for learning Scala?

solaris999• 9 years ago

The canonical source for learning Scala from scratch (at least, when I was learning a couple of years ago) is the Coursera course by Martin Odersky, one of the language's founders. It appears that the course has grown somewhat, but you can still find part 1 here: https://www.coursera.org/learn/progfun1

dv35z3• 9 years ago

I took the course - unfortunately, and to be honest, it didn't have the approachability and "fun" of Zed's books. To me - it felt very dry, academic, and quickly became a chore to complete rather than a joy. I need the version aimed for "C- python programmer" / newbie rather than "eager CS student" or "experienced Java dev".

blacksmythe• 9 years ago

  >> Coursera course by Martin Odersky

Brilliant course.

Unfortunately, the next one in the series is not nearly as good.

lmm• 9 years ago

Atomic Scala is what I hear recommended for starting from scratch - I can't truly speak for it myself as I knew Scala before it came out, but I liked what I saw of it.

dv35z3• 9 years ago

Thanks - will check that out.

garysieling• 9 years ago

The books I've looked at have tended to be too dry so I learned on my own, but there are some good conference talks out there.

https://www.findlectures.com/?p=1&class1=Technology&category...

brogrammernot• 9 years ago

I found Scala for Data Science by Pascal Bugnion to be great when I was learning Scala.

Granted, this was for a Big Data class at the university level that was covering Spark and Scala mostly. However, I remember the book to be very clear and digestible.

ing33k• 9 years ago

Check out https://www.youtube.com/user/DrMarkCLewis

Sir_Cmpwn• 9 years ago

I've standardized on this version of Python because it has a new improved string formatting system that is easier to use than the previous 4 (or 3, I forget, there were many)

Wait, is this seriously the only advantage you see to Python 3, Zed?

empath75• 9 years ago

I think he hated the old python3 string formatting and that was why he didn't cover python3 previously. The new version is good enough that he's willing to make the switch now.

Vaskivo3• 9 years ago

Maybe in the context of the book it is a major reason.

Strings are ubiquitous to programming. I'd argue that it's even more for first time programmers. Zed wanted something that would be easy to use.

(ASCII) Strings formatting is more important to beginners than unicode support, new style classes by default, iterators in range()/enumerate()/etc. , the new division operator, etc.

I haven't recommended his book to beginners because it was stuck in Python 2. But I have to agree that Python 2 had some stuff that was more "newbie-friendly" than Python 3

Sean17082• 9 years ago

  > But I have to agree that Python 2 had some stuff that was more "newbie-friendly" than Python 3

What stuff, out of interest?

Also I suspect that a huge proportion of newcomer's got very confused as to why 3/2 == 1.

amyjess2• 9 years ago

Not Zed, but for me, it's the sole reason I switched from 2 to 3.

I've been writing Python for over a decade, I dragged my heels on Python 3 for a long time, and as soon as PEP 498 came out, I decided then and there that all new personal projects I start will use Python 3, and I'll try to use 3 if I can in new work projects.

Not only that, but I've fallen for f-strings so hard that all my newer personal projects specifically require 3.6.

sevensor• 9 years ago

It was sane unicode support that did it for me. Unicode headaches are way down since I switched. LPTHW was my favorite intro to Python, but I was on the verge of not recommending it any more because of Python 2. This is a welcome change.

darkerside• 9 years ago

To Zed's credit, he'd have been within his rights to be annoyed if he'd rewritten LPTHW without f-strings prior to their introduction. It's a little bit of a vindication of his perspective.

a3n2• 9 years ago

Notwithstanding Zed, or any particular feature, the reason to move to Python 3 is that 2 is EOL in 2020. http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0373/

Unless any fork actually gains traction, Python 3 will be Python in 2020.

diimdeep• 9 years ago

Not hard enough. Try https://lectures.quantecon.org/py/

happy-go-lucky3• 9 years ago

Is that for quants? Seems to be good. Thanks for the link.

ChristianGeek• 9 years ago

No kidding. Thorough, too...the PDF for the Python lectures is 862 pages!

nullgeo• 9 years ago

Thanks for posting this :)

fredley• 9 years ago

Introductory example 1: Plotting a White Noise Process

Suppose we want to simulate and plot the white noise process ε0,ε1,…,εTε0,ε1,…,εT, where each draw εtεt is independent standard normal

tbranyen• 9 years ago

If this is anything like his Learn C book, I'll pass. Was a waste of money as he came off incredibly arrogant and fumbled through it.

dagw• 9 years ago

At least the original LPtHW was quite a fundamentally different book from his learning C book. The C book was aimed at people who knew at least the basics of programming in some other language and wanted to learn C, while the Python book was more aimed people who had never programmed at all.

oliwarner3• 9 years ago

You'll either love or hate his style but one thing you should note is that popular current production distributions are pegged on older versions (eg Ubuntu 16.04 has Python 3.5, Debian Jessie has 3.4.

If you're a purist and don't want to maintain your own build of Python (or trust an external PPA), I'd aim at 3.5.

That said, this is about learning... But you'll need to learn not to use f-strings if you want to use it on a current-generation LTS distribution.

mixmastamyk2• 9 years ago

3.6 is in the repos for yakkety as a beta, and upcoming release on zesty. Unfortunately it will likely not be the default Py 3.x until the "aardvark" release.

oliwarner3• 9 years ago

I'd advise against using 9m support distributions in production though. It's a super pain in the arse to have to do major upgrades that often.

lima• 9 years ago

pyenv is great for running whatever Python version you like: https://github.com/yyuu/pyenv

I'm a strong believer in de-coupling base system and application deployment.

And if you're a CentOS user, you can get newer Python releases from https://www.softwarecollections.org/en/scls/?search=python (an official Red Hat project)

drops• 9 years ago

For a beginner who wants to learn Python, which one is better — 2 or 3?

bnchrch• 9 years ago

Definately 3.

satysin• 9 years ago

3. When you need to work with a 2 code base the learning curve won't be big at all. Whereas if you start with 2 and then move to 3 you will have to unlearn a bunch of stuff which is just a waste of time. Start with 3 and then learn just the differences in 2 when/if you need them.

cgriswald2• 9 years ago

Agreed. Just as a for-instance: In Python 2, the parenthesis on a print call are optional. In Python 3, they're not. Going from 3 to 2 you probably won't even notice. Going from 2 to 3... To this day I often fail to type those parenthesis.

pvg2• 9 years ago

Definitely 3 and almost certainly not from this book.

QML• 9 years ago

If you want to learn a language efficiently, work on a project with it. I went through Learn Python the Hard Way pretty fast but my retention wasn't that great.

johansch• 9 years ago

Learn Go instead.

fnordfnordfnord3• 9 years ago

3, but when you find some snippet on the web that you want to try and it doesn't work, try not to forget that it may have been written in the Python 2 syntax.

BuckRogers13• 9 years ago

Learn Go. It depends what you want to do with said skills but JS ES6 would be worth it too in the web space.

I wouldn't recommend learning Python at this point with the 2/3 split and uncertainty. If you must learn Python I'd learn 2.7. Reasoning is that almost all the jobs are Python2 still. There's just so much code out there based on it and you're almost certainly going to have to use it anyway. Don't listen to the haters, it's what will pay your bills. Move to Python3 when/if your job does. They'll probably move to Go instead.

For hobby work not remotely considering a job? Then learn Elixir.

pvg2• 9 years ago

For a beginner trying to decide between Python 2 and 3, 'learn Go' doesn't seem like useful advice. One good thing about Python is the gobs of educational material available, much of it free. If the person is looking to make this a career, they'll end up learning a bunch of languages as a matter of course anyway.

a3n2• 9 years ago

3. 2 is officially End of Life in 2020. http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0373/

jwilk• 9 years ago

Define "better".

IshKebab• 9 years ago

I'm not sure I would recommend learning Python to anyone these days. Go is just so much nicer and almost as easy, and also avoids the inevitable GIL & speed problems.

bkbridge• 9 years ago

If you are doing AI, machine learning, it's all Python. Other language support yes, but python is it. Alexa does not support Go.

https://www.tensorflow.org/

vegabook2• 9 years ago

unfortunately this is true. For one thing Go doesn't have a REPL - major problem for data science/AI/scientic programming. And it's very committed to old-style procedural/imperative paradigm.

Numpy is carrying Python, and its competitors are thin. There's Julia, but that's not really ambitious enough compared with Numpy to be worth moving to. There's Scala though then you need to love the JVM. Lua had promise as a nice and tight, pragmatic and fast language, but it seems to have missed its window of opportunity. What else? I'd genuinely like to know. Ideally I'd like something that's got a functional programming flavour but that also data-parallel, almost R-style, by default, so as easily able to target the GPU. I took a look at futhark but it seems too experimental, as does Ocaml/spoc combo. I am taking a serious look at the probabilistic programming area with Edward or Stan, but then we're back to Python front ends.... Actually I did look at Swift which does c-class speed with an official REPL but an apple-supported language may not attract the science/ML crowd. Meantime rust is REPL-less for now...

kstrauser3• 9 years ago

Not to mention that Jupyter (was IPython) is a gorgeous way to work through a dataset while describing your process to your peers.

StreamBright2• 9 years ago

You mean the API that you are calling is in Python. I think the heavy lifting is mostly C/C++.

vonklaus3• 9 years ago

This whole thread.

"This post is an interesting approach to B. I have looked in to A and B, but if you could explain why you chose A or B that would be helpful"

C

PuffinBlue• 9 years ago

Knew it was coming, but still kinda annoying right in the middle:

https://josharcher.uk/categories/lpthw/

systems2• 9 years ago

is this complete or a work in progress, because if you try to buy, you can still only buy the 3rd edition (with a free upgrade to 4th edition)

so to be clear, is the online version complete, and only the pdf and videos are missing, or even the online version is still work in progress

BuckRogers13• 9 years ago

Python3 folks act so daft about his Turing-complete comments. ZS knows what Turing complete is and means. He was clearly trolling, saying in essence, "if the CPython team can't create interop between CPython2 and 3 code then they really botched the job.. Python3 bytecode is Turing incomplete. What a fail."

And then people attempt to troll him saying he doesn't know what Turing complete is. Perhaps they really don't understand what they're even responding to, that's what it appears. Or it's just a willful attack because they "like Python3". Unfortunately with Python3 this is what the Python community has been slowly devolving into, what comes off as a bunch of trolls/kids or ridiculous adults.

thehardsphere11• 9 years ago

1. I'd really like to see proof that the people he was trolling actually existed, and if they did exist, a coherent explanation of why beginners to Python needed to be exposed to the arguments of said people through trolling.

2. Zed can troll people, and that's totally OK, but the "like Python 3" people can't troll him or counter-troll him, because it's turning the Python community into trollville. I'm guessing like sort of how Rails is a ghetto.

vonklaus3• 9 years ago

I'd really like to see proof that the people he was trolling actually existed

See the user of this parent comment.

siddharthgdas• 9 years ago

If you are a complete beginner in python, I would rather suggest this for python3 - www.openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english3e

alexeiz• 9 years ago

Zed lost his credence. It's hard to take him seriously after what he's said in the past. Besides, the book is rather light on content.

rattray• 9 years ago

For those of us who are late to the party, what did Zed say in the past?

renesd• 9 years ago

It's actually harmful to point newbies towards his work. There are much better resources that have been proven in practice to work better.

dfabulich• 9 years ago

Such as?

jorge-fundido• 9 years ago

I tell people to `ipython; %magic`. For all of python's faults, that REPL is the gold standard and makes for a nice way to learn the language.

pbreit• 9 years ago

Would a tutorial like this really be worse if it used realistic situations?

mistaken• 9 years ago

The hard way is still the easy way though. Python is simple to learn :)

edgartaor• 9 years ago

In your opinion which one is better? Learn Python the hard way or Dive into Python 3

http://www.diveintopython3.net

Orangeair2• 9 years ago

A lot of people dislike Zed Shaw's books (the author of Learn ___ the Hard Way) for various reasons, and he has posted some things online that serious call into question his credibility (namely, claiming that Python 3 is not Turing complete).

Dive into Python 3 is a good book. I used it to supplement my CS classes in early college. There are some other good book suggestions on the sidebar of https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/ . In particular, I've heard good things about "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python".

dtornabene2• 9 years ago

Its a great book, that still has relevance, amazingly. Theres also the fact that he feels like its necessary to shit on anyone who disagrees with him...or, anyone at all actually. The trolling thing is lame, and a total waste of peoples time, like, for example, when he literally ate something in the middle of his lecture at Pycon, as if he somehow couldn't find the time to eat a candy bar in the elevator. I literally worked Pycon, and I can guarantee you that speakers, and pretty much anyone else, can find the two minutes to choke down an orange or whatever before the go up to speak. Its his persona, which he uses to get notoriety, which he uses to get work.

crispytx• 9 years ago

Learn Python The Hard Way was the first programming book I ever read. Beats the hell out of codeacademy and all that other shit.

nof• 9 years ago

I would basically avoid this simply by reading his idea of what makes good educational content: tests, repetition, memorization and boring predetermined projects. If you know anything about educational theory, you will quickly discover that constructivist education, or constructionism as Seymour Papert coined, is a way more effective and motivational way to learn computer science and coding. There are basic understandings of computering which is beyond specific language, eg loops or logic. You are not doing yourself any favors by memorizing the entire syntax of a language. This happens while you do personal and engaging coding projects.

oli5679• 9 years ago

Does anyone have any advice from where to go after beginner/intermediate python? I can hack together a program with the functionality I want, but frequently it's pretty verbose and the architecture gets creaky as the complexity increases...

yhoiseth• 9 years ago

I'd suggest http://www.obeythetestinggoat.com/ if you're looking to use Python for web development.

pnt12• 9 years ago

https://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/nopython3.html >This document serves as a collection of reasons why beginners should avoid Python 3 as of November 22nd, 2016.

This is the first thing I get when searching "Learn python3 hard way" in Google. Maybe it's time to update this page :)

I didn't enjoy the python2 book too much, but I'll give this one a try.

Learn Python 3 the Hard Way

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