Stand-alone document files for tech writing are awful. They should not be used as widely as they are.

Want a book with dozens of project ideas?

Each has a description, and approach, and deliverables. It's a lot like ordinary development work, but with some detailed guidance from the author. (And no deadline imposed by your team lead or manager.)

These are projects you can do. You can post …

It's hard to write shameless promotional material.

I already wrote the books, isn't that bold enough?

It isn't, though.

Packt’s Head of Product, Oli Huggins, said: “We believe in helping to serve and support the global developer community. By selling our eBooks and Videos for $5, we hope to …

Check out https://www.pythonpodcast.com/steven-lott-learn-to-code-episode-283/. This was a fun conversation on Python and learning.

We didn't talk about my books in detail. Instead, we talked about learning and what it takes to get closer to mastery.

It's a thing I worry about. I suspect other writers worry about …

See https://opendatascience.com/removing-items-from-a-set-remove-pop-and-difference/

This puts the focus on a few important set operations.

Python 101, by Michael Driscoll. 545 pages, available from leanpub.com in a variety of formats. Available soon in hardcover.

The modern Python programming language is a large topic. A book on a programming language has to be seen as a collection of several large topics.

At its core, a …

Most of the things that got cut were (to me) obviously obsolete. For example, replacing collections.namedtuple with typing.NamedTuple seemed like a clear example of obsolete. A reviewer really thought I should skip all NamedTuple and use frozen data classes.

More important are some things that I learned about …

For the author, a book is a journey.

Writing something new, the author describes a path the reader can follow to get from -- well -- anywhere the reader might be to the author's suggested destination. Not everyone makes the whole trip. And not everyone arrives at the hoped-for destination.

Second editions …

It's time to revise Mastering Object-Oriented Python. While the previous edition is solidly focused on Python3, it lacks some important features:

• F-Strings
• Type Hints
• types.NamedTuple
• Data Classes

So. There's some stuff to add. I don't think there's too much to take away. I plan to make some things a …

In Montreal! How cool is that? I'll be working for my current employer, also a sponsor, to locate Python talent. I'll have a few copies of my books that I can give away. Most importantly, the promotional code PYCON_LOTT gives 50% off my Packt titles and runs from April 7th …