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Python, from your first line to your first library

CodeWithPurpose lessons that turn Python into a language you actually think in, not one you look up. Twenty-four chapters, no setup required.

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Student learning Python

1. Foundations

4 chapters

What Python actually is, the one thing you need to run it, and what a name really points at.

FoundationsInteractive

Why Python, Specifically

Every language claims to be simple, right up until you try to read one. Look at a working Python program you have never seen before, and notice how much of it you already understand.

7 min read

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FoundationsInteractive

Setting Up Without the Ceremony

The usual first step in a Python tutorial is an hour of installer screenshots. Run one line without installing anything, and see the same interpreter everyone else is using.

8 min read

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FoundationsInteractive

Names Are Not Boxes

Most explanations call a variable a box that holds a value, and that picture breaks the moment one name affects another. Point two names at the same list, change it through one, and watch the other see it too.

9 min read

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FoundationsInteractive

Arithmetic, and Where It Surprises You

Two slashes and one slash look like a typo of each other, and they hand back different types on purpose. Divide the same two numbers both ways and see exactly where a float appears uninvited.

8 min read

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2. Working With Data

4 chapters

Strings, lists, tuples, dictionaries, and sets — the shapes almost every program is built from.

DataInteractive

Text Is Not a Single Thing

A string looks like one piece of text until you need its third character. Slice a sentence apart by position and find out why the end index is never the one you first guess.

9 min read

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DataInteractive

Ordered Collections, Two Ways

Python gives you two ways to hold an ordered group of things, and the difference is not the brackets. Try to change a tuple the way you would a list, and read exactly what it refuses, and why.

9 min read

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DataInteractive

Looking Things Up Instead of Counting Along

A list makes you remember where something is. A dictionary lets you forget. Build one from scratch, look something up by name instead of position, and ask for a key that was never there.

9 min read

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DataInteractive

What Counts as Empty, False, or Equal

Python will evaluate almost anything as true or false, including things that are neither. Feed in an empty list, the number zero, and the string that spells the word False, and see which ones the language actually treats as false.

8 min read

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3. Controlling the Flow

4 chapters

Making a program choose, repeat, and remember work as a function instead of a copy-paste.

Control FlowInteractive

Teaching a Program to Choose

A program that always does the same thing is not a program, it is a constant. Feed one input through a chain of conditions and watch exactly one branch of it ever run.

8 min read

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Control FlowInteractive

Doing Something More Than Once

Looping in Python means iterating over the thing itself, not counting up to its length and hoping you stop in time. Step through a collection one item at a time and watch the loop variable outlive the loop that created it.

9 min read

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Control FlowInteractive

Naming a Piece of Work

Copy the same five lines into three places in a program and you have created three bugs waiting to happen, not three features. Wrap them in a function once, and watch every copy become a single name you can call.

10 min read

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Control FlowInteractive

Where a Name Actually Lives

A variable created inside a function looks like it should be visible everywhere once the function has run. Try to read it from outside, and find out Python disagrees, on purpose.

10 min read

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4. Thinking in Objects

4 chapters

Reading your own mistakes, splitting a program into files, and bundling data with the behaviour that acts on it.

ObjectsInteractive

When Things Go Wrong on Purpose

A traceback looks like the program's way of failing at you. Read one from the bottom up instead of the top down, and it turns into the most specific bug report you will ever get for free.

9 min read

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Objects

Splitting a Program Into Pieces

A single file works exactly until it does not, somewhere around the point it holds three unrelated things. Split one program across two files, import one from the other, and watch the boundary hold.

8 min read

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ObjectsInteractive

Bundling Data With Behaviour

A dictionary can hold a name and an age, but nothing stops you misspelling the key next time you use it. Define a class once, stamp out three objects from it, and give each its own values without repeating the shape.

11 min read

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Objects

Reusing Behaviour Without Copying It

Two classes that share eighty percent of their behaviour usually end up as two copies of that eighty percent. Write the shared part once, inherit it in both, and override only what actually differs.

10 min read

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5. Working Like a Real Program

4 chapters

Touching the outside world through files, writing collections in one line, and producing values lazily.

Real Programs

Reading and Writing Outside the Program

Everything so far has lived inside the program and vanished the moment it stopped running. Write a line to an actual file on disk, close it properly, and read the same line back in a program that starts fresh.

9 min read

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Real ProgramsInteractive

Building a Collection in One Line

Building a new list from an old one usually starts as three lines: an empty list, a loop, and an append. Write the same transformation as one line, and read it back exactly as fast as you wrote it.

9 min read

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Real ProgramsInteractive

Producing Values One at a Time

A list built to hold a million numbers holds all million in memory at once, whether you need them yet or not. Write a generator instead, pull one value at a time, and watch it produce the next number only when asked.

11 min read

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Real Programs

Wrapping a Function Without Rewriting It

Adding logging to ten functions usually means editing ten functions. Write the logging once as a decorator, apply it with one line above each function, and leave the original code untouched.

11 min read

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6. Going Further

4 chapters

Other people's code, the internet's data format, proving your program works, and building one from scratch.

Advanced

Standing on Other People's Code

Nobody writes date parsing or HTTP requests from scratch, because somebody has already written it better and tested it more. Install a real package, import it, and use in three lines what would take an afternoon to build.

9 min read

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AdvancedInteractive

Talking to the Outside World

JSON looks almost exactly like a Python dictionary, right up until you notice the differences. Convert one into the other in both directions, and find the two places the conversion is not quite what you expected.

10 min read

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Advanced

Proving It Works, Not Just Believing It

Running a program and reading the output by eye works fine until it has more than one path through it. Write an assertion that checks the answer for you, and let it fail loudly the moment the code stops agreeing with itself.

10 min read

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Advanced

Building Something From All of It

Every chapter until now has proven one idea in isolation. Build one program that needs variables, a loop, a function, and a dictionary all in the same twenty lines, and watch them stop being separate topics.

14 min read

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Open source

Your chapter goes here

Every chapter here was written by a student. Propose your own topic, or fix one that confused you. Drafts stay invisible until they are ready, so nothing you start can break the site.

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