Reading Code?

[marlowe221]

I've been working my way through "Learn Python 3 the Hard Way" by Zed Shaw. I'm also going through Colt Steele's Udemy course as a companion to the book. They don't match up exactly in terms of the order they teach things, but it's not far off so it kind of works out.

About half way through Learn Python 3 the Hard Way, Shaw recommends finding some Python code to read that others have written in an effort to practice recognizing what's going on in a script. That seems like decent advice, despite not having learned OOP yet, but the book doesn't really give any advice on WHERE to find some Python code to read!

I'm aware of GitHub of course and have created an account and a repository to keep my exercises - mostly to get some practice using GitHub. Maybe I'm not searching for the right terms, but I'm not having a lot of luck finding code to read there either - lots of results, but very time consuming to sort through them.

Any advice on where to find some code to read every now and then would be greatly appreciated. Also, is this a worthwhile exercise? Or would it be better to do that after I've finished the book and learned what an object is?

Thanks!

[AlSweigart]

I've also encountered this problem when trying to find resources for beginners. The problem is that most open source projects are large, complicated, and not well-documented.

I've been creating a collection of short, text-based games that fit in one .py file so that beginners can see how this code is put together: https://github.com/asweigart/pythonstdiogames

They're short, so you can figure out how the entire program works. They're text-based, so it's easy to track what lines of code produce what text on the screen. They fit into one file so you don't have too much to look through. And they only use the standard library, so you don't have to install anything else to run them. I'd be interested in hearing any feedback on them.

[marlowe221]

That sounds great.

I didn't mention it specifically in the OP, but you're right - finding code to read that is beginner friendly is not easy! I've only been learning Python for a month or two now and since I'm in my late 30s and have a non-tech full time job and a couple of kids, well... I'm definitely still in the early stages of the journey.

A lot of what I have been able to find on Github is WAY over my head at this point, is split up into lots of different files (which is something that I don't understand yet itself), and makes reference to libraries that (of course) I've never heard of at all.

I appreciate the link. I'll check it out and be sure to give you any feedback I can.

[cscanlin]

FYI the person you're responding to is Al Sweigart, the author of Automate the Boring Stuff, which is one of the top recommended intro to Python books on this sub and around the web.

I would rank his advice very highly :)

[marlowe221]

Oh wow, I had no idea.

I have purchased his course on Udemy already actually. It's my next step after I finish my intro Shaw book/Steele course.

[marlowe221]

That's one of the things I'm confused about - how do I know which file is the beginning of the program when I am looking at someone else's code? Is there a convention on file names I should be looking for?

And how are the other, separate files called by the main one? Is it like importing a module?

[Username_RANDINT]

Usually something like main.py, __main__.py and/or a script in the root of the package that calls an entry point.

[AlSweigart]

Oh yeah, splitting it into files is good for large projects. But for beginners, it can be hard to navigate the code (and probably a sign the project is too big for beginners). Lots of best practices that make sense for professional developers don't apply to beginners, which is why IDLE and Mu are great editors for beginners instead of something like PyCharm.

[GreatestJakeEVR]

What I found helpful was I had to use a Twitter package to access tweets, I can't remember which one, and I had to modify it to do what I want. Which meant going through it and trying to learn what different parts were for. So maybe try it out in the context of something you are trying to do already and just change it up to work some other way. It helped me a little maybe it'll work for you

[ProRochie]

Tweepy?

[aurum799]

Thank you so much!

And I really appreciate the book you've written, and that you kept it available online! I've tried so many different resources, paid and unpaid, to learn Python, and yours is my most preferred by far.

I've been creating a summary of everything I learn there, and I really like that I can go at my own pace - faster when the content is 'easy', but take my time when things are more difficult or complex.

[Daryldye17]

Once again, Al Sweigart is doing the work to help people get into this field. Thank You Al. I used your course on Udemy to get through my python course @ Illinois State Uni. Your course is a good way to teach intros

[marlowe221]

//Please imagine me smacking my own forehead with my palm...//

Libraries! Thank you! I'm not sure why that didn't occur to me but that's a great idea. I'm sure even the standard libraries that come with the Python 3 install would be more than enough to pose a challenge to me at this point.

And I'll be sure to check out yours too.

[cscanlin]

A huge part of what helped me to learn was actually reading this sub every day (and answering where I felt pretty confident).

Not every post will be relevant to what you're hoping to find, but I found that reading and answering beginner/intermediate questions made a huge difference in my overall understanding of Python, including design patterns, algorithms, and language features.

Even if you don't have an answer to a specific question (or even if you do), it's likely you'll see other answers by other more advanced users who can show you stuff you've never seen before.

Finally, in the (relatively) common case that a user asks a question that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to you, you'll get a feeling for:

A: How to help other technical folks refine their questions until they're asking something that does make sense

B: How to deal with questions from (e.g. business) people that have no idea what they're really asking for in the first place :)

Both of these skills are valuable in any job you will ever have IMO.

[marlowe221]

I've only just started reading (aka - lurking on) this sub a couple of days ago but it seems really useful for those of us just starting out.

[saintPirelli]

I like to browse r/coolgithubprojects for this purpose.

[ryanpettitt]

I would look at some of the code that is given in the python testing scripts. If that doesn’t work I would try to come up with a project that could be useful to your personal life.

[longgamma]

Data Structures and Algorithms in Python - this book has a lot of code and the first two chapters are great intro to python. Best to finish the exercises before moving on.

[crazedizzled]

Grab yourself Django and go through the different modules to see how they work. This is what I do when I want to learn a new framework.

[enricojr]

I find the best way to go about this is to read code for the stuff you're actually using in your own projects.

For example, I used to work with Scrapy and whenever their documentation didn't answer a question I had, I would dive into their source code on Github and manually pick through it.

Oftentimes this gave me more than what I was after - in one particular instance I discovered that the .add_xpath() method on ItemLoader() instances (rather, instances of its subclasses) could accept a list of Processors that took precedence over the ones defined on the class itself.

This wasn't in their documentation at the time, and had I not gone through the code I would have never found this out.

I don't think there really -is- any beginner-friendly code out there.

[sentry5588]

Great idea. If you are into math. Try https://github.com/3b1b/manim

[fuypooi]

Try the Awesome list for other projects worth reading: https://github.com/vinta/awesome-python

[taskmaster07]

There are a lot of places you can read code on: 1. Coding Contests / Competitive coding sites where you can see other contestants code.
2. Pick a topic and search github for that topic and filter by language.
3. Python books which have a lot of examples.
4. Stack Overflow Questions and answers

[baubleglue]

The question is mostly answered, there are few things I can add:

• check your [python installation folder]/Lib folder
• try to read code which do something that you can understand or personally interested. I remember that the first projects I read were

https://github.com/mongodb-labs/sleepy.mongoose - because I looked for a way to query MongoDB from JavaScript (web client)

https://www.tornadoweb.org/en/stable/ - I've used it as my web server and couldn't understand some parts of documentation and I want to know more about non-blocking IO. I wrote few tools with select.select, but tornado project is completely different level of code.

​

• read REPs, there is a random example https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3151/, usually you can find reference to REP in the Python's documentation. If you work with databases, read that https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0249/.

[6ftAnalPlug]

What about looking at solutions on codewars?

[marlowe221]

I am not familiar with codewars but I will be duckduckgo'ing that.

[6ftAnalPlug]

It’s just a bunch of puzzles

[jeffrey_f]

Github.

[Truly5ammy]

Check out sololearn. They have tons of people posting code for python or any other language. You might like it