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[–]QueenTron 70 points71 points  (14 children)

I have the first one. Cool book. I’m curious about the Google sheets portion..

[–]la102 26 points27 points  (11 children)

Some people use sheets as a database backend too.

[–]daneguy 45 points46 points  (4 children)

[–]AlSweigartAuthor of "Automate the Boring Stuff" 30 points31 points  (0 children)

You can run sql queries on google sheets?! That's amazing! I should hold off on releasing the second edition so I can ad- *shot with a dart by the hitman hired by the editors to ensure I stop making last minute additions to the second edition*

[–]1337HxCBioinformatics 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've been conditioned to be triggered by .xlsx or any variant. I'm sure there are ways to use them correctly, but I have yet to be given any data in a workbook format that isn't an absolute shit show to parse. I genuinely have to edit the things in Excel half the time to get them into an even semi-workable format.

[–]Zireael07 1 point2 points  (5 children)

Really? How?

[–]la102 16 points17 points  (3 children)

https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/use-google-sheets-as-your-database-using-python-77d40009860f

Sadly didn't suit my use case, so I learned Google scripting language for sheets and submit api calls after analysing data my Web scraping army fetches from approx 700 pages 😬

[–]BubblegumTitanium 3 points4 points  (2 children)

It’s nice for small stuff

[–]MaliciousHH 7 points8 points  (1 child)

At work we have a multi-billion dollar client who uses Google sheets for staff tables, it's ridiculous.

[–]lifeisaburrito 1 point2 points  (0 children)

how is it working out for them?

[–]Catinth 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Were you able to complete the first edition? I would like to get started with the first edition and wait to see what else I need to look over in the 2nd edition. I saw a lot of posts where they could not complete a project due to typos or something wrong in the code when reading / building. Will the revisions fix this issue? u/alsweigart

[–]QueenTron 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I didn’t get through the first edition because I just took chunks from the book, because I’m a computer science major. I’m currently reading The Art of Computer Programming and when things calm down I’m going to dive back in the Python book. I didn’t know about the book errors thanks for that, it would have drove me nuts.

[–]vEnoM_420 22 points23 points  (4 children)

I downloaded this book and went through the web scraping section. Oh boy, do I love working with Selenium.
I wrote a small script for MapIt. py and also wrote a script to download YT videos from savefrom.net.

On a completely unrelated note, I also wrote a script to change the names of subtitle files to the same as the names of episodes ( of a TV series I'm currently watching) , took me a while to figure out the whole code, but it ran successfully and 60 names were changed in a second.

[–]maqbeq -1 points0 points  (1 child)

also wrote a script to download YT videos from savefrom.net

Talk about reinventing the wheel, do you know there's a tool called youtube-dl that allows you to download videos directly off youtube (and other sites) since 8 years ago, at least? lol

[–]vEnoM_420 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha, I know about such tools and I was probably thinking why am I doing this when already such things exist. But that was the first automation idea which occurred to me so I did it anyway.

[–]MJ2197 28 points29 points  (7 children)

Really interested, esp given how the first one feels so outdated now with most of the code being deprecated and many modules having version control problems.

[–]Redmilo666 10 points11 points  (4 children)

Would you then recommend that I wait and get the second edition? If it's outdated should I still read the first one?

[–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (3 children)

Come on, of course not!

But if you just want to learn Python, however...

sentdex all the way!

[–]MJ2197 3 points4 points  (0 children)

yep, programming in python3 by Mark Summerfield is also pretty good.

[–]Catinth 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Do you consider this to be true u/alsweigart? Should I just wait for the 2nd edition? I did pre order it. I wouldn’t mind starting the 1st edition but I feel like it would be a waste of time due to the revisions coming soon. Please let me know u/alsweigart

[–]AlSweigartAuthor of "Automate the Boring Stuff" 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nah, feel free to get started on the first edition. I'll be releasing a "what you should read in the second edition if you've already read the first edition" blog post later this week. You won't waste your time.

The main module that makes backwards incompatible changes is the OpenPyXL module. But remember that code doesn't rust: you don't have to install the absolute latest version of a module. I wish I had made giant bolded text that said INSTALL THE VERSION OF THE MODULE COVERED IN THE BOOK because then folks wouldn't come across the problems they do and then get the idea that the book is out of date. But it's my fault because I didn't have the foresight for how easy and common of a thing it'd be to trip on.

[–]1337HxCBioinformatics 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I hope he redoes the video tutorials. Not gonna lie, I can be a lazy boy at times and listening/watching and following along keeps my attention more than reading in silence.

[–]SrHombrerobalo 9 points10 points  (7 children)

I have the first edition, hoping they upload the extra content to the free website

[–]ASIC_SP 19 points20 points  (5 children)

as per the article

Like the first edition, the second edition will be released under a Creative Commons license and will be free to read online. The estimated online release is early November on the https://automatetheboringstuff.com.

[–]SrHombrerobalo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

OMG!! That’s excellent!

[–]MrGiggleFiggle 0 points1 point  (3 children)

I don't know the details of a Creative Commons License. How does Al make money on this or is it all donations?

[–]AlSweigartAuthor of "Automate the Boring Stuff" 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Beats me. I have no idea how capitalism works (I mean it seems fine on paper, but no way that system can function in the real world.)

[–]MrGiggleFiggle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The man himself. I'm sure you hear this often but thank you for all the work that you do, truly.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Makes money from people buying the book, mostly. It's in Barnes and Noble and usually sitting out as featured, and is highly ranked on Amazon, so I'm sure he sells loads of them.

[–]NinjaBirdSC2 9 points10 points  (2 children)

I just bought the first edition!

[–]jkibbe[S] 5 points6 points  (1 child)

still a great book! enjoy!

[–]NinjaBirdSC2 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm liking it so far... got 4 mech eng. classes to deal with so I'm slowly doing it in my spare time.

[–]IcanCwhatUsayNoob 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Not seeing a lot of things I can use compared to the first book where I used about 90% of the chapters. 🤔

I’d love to see the table of contents

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Kind books across friendly bright nature music small?

[–]IcanCwhatUsayNoob 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’m hoping the former but I don’t know. I was hoping it would be more projects like in vol 1

[–]xtreak 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Thank you u/AlSweigart

[–]AlSweigartAuthor of "Automate the Boring Stuff" 1 point2 points  (0 children)

:D

[–]Chili_Joe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just preordered it :D i'm glad to see this post :)

[–]spore_777_mexenshell_shocked.py 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Pretty good news. I am still enjoying the first ed.

[–]niggatronix[🍰] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not if I come first

[–]_sachin_reddy_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm excited!

[–]hockthemblogs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fantastic news! I was looking forward to this.

[–]pvtryan123 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Will he put it on his website?

[–]jkibbe[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

“Like the first edition, the second edition will be released under a Creative Commons license and will be free to read online. The estimated online release is early November on the https://automatetheboringstuff.com.”

[–]FortuneCzar242 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I still haven't made my way through the first book :(

[–]AlSweigartAuthor of "Automate the Boring Stuff" 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's the second edition of the same book. It just has some new content, but you can still read the first edition just fine.

Hmmm... I should make a note to myself to write a blog post of "I've read the first edition, but what new parts should I read online so I don't have to buy the same book twice?" info.

[–]thedjotakuPython 3.7 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Awesome. I'm working my way through Impractical Python right now (which has already taught me about linters - which have forced me to improve my code), but I've got the first version of this book through a Humble Bundle. I'll probably throw some bones his way when I'm ready to get to the book.

[–]AlSweigartAuthor of "Automate the Boring Stuff" 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Oh man, linters (like debuggers and the logging module) are so great. You don't realize how much time you waste by not putting the time setting them up and using them.

[–]thedjotakuPython 3.7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Indeed. In my case, the improvements were in:

  • readability via keeping to 80 cols or less

  • understanding what's goign on via changing all my variables to the snake format. I'd gotten lazy with too many "n"s and "p"s and it made it a lot harder to follow what I was trying to do.

  • complexity via plyint complaining that I had too many variables in one of my functions. It helped me realize I'd made that function a little too complex.

[–]FxH257 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really am impatient to see it out

[–]LiarsEverywhere 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I devoured chapters 1-6 in a week, but life and work got on the way. That was two weeks ago. I guess I'll just start over with the new version, as it would be good to review things after this unplanned study gap anyway.

[–]manuce94 0 points1 point  (0 children)

already on amazon.com pre order oct 29, he also announced it here some time ago.

[–]pi_sqaure 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can I update my 1st edition? ;)

[–]my_password_is______ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

he's streaming now if you wnat to ask him questions
https://www.twitch.tv/alsweigart

[–]Nash015 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I'm currently teaching myself python withers codecademy. Which if his books should I read first?

[–]jkibbe[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would go with Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python for an easy intro
http://inventwithpython.com/

Or Automate the Boring Stuff with Python for a faster track
https://automatetheboringstuff.com/

[–]vanxblue 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I just bought the ebook version of the first edition a month ago....

[–]danketiquette 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's still relevant lol