DEV Community: tarakuds

Python For Everyone - Mastering Python the right way

tarakuds — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 16:03:54 +0000

There's a general saying that what is good for Mr A may not be good for Mr B. But then, how about Mr B diligently following the right way or process? Well I'll leave you to be the judge of that.

Ever since I picked an interest in learning python, its been an interesting ride all through, especially having to find out the numerous solutions one can achieve with it.

Lets get down to business. It may interest you that python can be applied in the following fields;

Website development
Data Science
Machine Learning
Automation and a lot more.

Deciding which field you will like to specialize in will help you streamline your learning. However, the following basic knowledge are required irrespective of the field you decide to concentrate on.

Data Types: these includes how to represent strings, numbers, boolean and functions declaration.
Data structures : the likes of tuples, sets, dictionary etc is also needed.
Object Oriented Programming : how to use classes and create reusable modules.
Get more information from my previous articles

Back to the top, all that has been stated are just words of mouth. In order to actualize any of these processes and see it work real time, you will be needing an IDE(by now you should know what this is) and an interpreter. In this case, I will recommend using Visual studio code amongst others and the python extension on VS code or download Python itself from their official website. You can use the following links visual studio code official python official website. To get more information about its installation you can check some of my previous articles stated above.

Here are a few projects you can get done using python and references to their code base on my github profile. Please do good to star if you find these codes useful.

Enjoy your read.

Data Structures and Algorithm

tarakuds — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 21:38:10 +0000

Data structure

This explains how data is organized and stored when been processed so as to ensure that it is accessible and stored efficiently without loosing accuracy

Algorithm

This describes the flow / set of instruction required to process data for a specific purpose.This deals with certain logic to solve problems.

In python, the following data structure exists

Lists
Tuples
Dictionary

These three are somewhat synonymous to an Array as commonly described by other programming languages. However, they differ in a few little ways.

Don't get confused, I'll explain.

Lists
they are an array that can contain the various data types as an element. They can however be modified and can be accessed using their number indexes using the form (where the first index starts from 0 and the last n-1)

Example

list1 = ['physics', 'chemistry', 1997, 2000, "c", "d"]

print(list1[0]) 
#output : physics

You can perform a few additional operations such as append()-add list

Tuples
In the case, they are also an indexed array but are immutable (that is cannot be changed or are said to be constant through the entire program) once declared. This however doesn't make them useless, they can be used and accessed when a need arises.

Example
Even though immutable can be concatenated

tup1 = (12, 34.56);
tup2 = ('abc', 'xyz');

#concatenation
tup3 = tup1 + tup2;

print tup3;

#output will be - (12, 34.56, 'abc', 'xyz')

Dictionaries
Here they are stored and accessed using key-value pairs. Just like an object in other programming languages.

Example

dict = {
        'Name': 'Zara', 
        'Age': 7, 
        'Class': 'First'
       }
print "dict['Name']: ", dict['Name'] 
#output  - Zara

print "dict['Age']: ", dict['Age'] 
#output - 7

Other types of data structures includes

Set
They are mutable collection of data. They are useful as they dont allow for duplicates. Note that a frozen set is immutable. They remain the same at all times

Linked List
As the name implies, its elements are linked using pointers. Therefore, they have no contiguous memory location for storage. the structure is as follows, the first node is called the ** Head **. Each node contains a data and a pointer.

Stack
This is also another linear data structure storing items in a particular manner. Last-In/First-Out or First-In/Last-Out. Here, as an element is added one one end, the element comes out from that same end. simple explanation for this is when you pile books, to access any of the book, you need to remove from the ones above till you get to you choice book. removing the book you need suddenly can scatter the whole structure.

Queue
It stores items in a First-In/First-Out manner. Just as the name implies, when on a bank or coffee shop queue, the first customer to arrive will be the first to be attended to.

Tree
This is a data structure arranged according to their hierarchy, from the root to the least node.

KEYS

Element: each item stored in an array
Index: location of an element stored in an array
concatenation: combining more than one variable to one

Python 101 - Ultimate Python Guide

tarakuds — Sun, 13 Feb 2022 21:42:53 +0000

Introduction To Modern Python

Python is an high level language, easy to learn but powerful as well. It uses the Object Oriented Programming approach. It can be used in a series of application such as application development, machine learning, artificial intelligence, automation and more.

Installation Process

It is simpler to use, and available for major operating system platforms such as Windows, Mac, Linux etc whose installation files can be found on Python download.

Download the installer file

This can be obtained from the python official site stated above. Ensure to download the latest stable version.

Run the installer

please ensure to check the box that says add python 3 x to path this ensures that the installer places the interpretor in an execution path.

Confirm installation

After the installation is complete, launch the command prompt on your PC and type python3 --version to ascertain the version of python that is been installed.

Write your first line of codes

Create a directory on the command prompt, create a file, launch the file in a text editor.

write your first line of code

message = "Hello World"

print(message)

to test these lines of code, return to your CMD and type python3 <filename>

There you go, your first python code running. Explore more and appreciate its wonders.

You should also know

The program can also be splitted into reusable forms called MODULES

Just like every other programming language, python uses the string, numeric, boolean, arays/list data types. using similar control flows such as if, elif(else if), while loop, for loops, functions and more. You can also use packages that can be imported directly into the code structure.

All python files saved into a text editor must end with the extension .py. There are a few interpreters that can be used alongside to test our code these includes; Jupyter notebook, Pycharm, Anaconda etc.

It is easily identified by this image

Please Note

When writing python codes, indentation is very important, else one may run into errors.

Follow this space for more.