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Learn to Code

If you’ve ever spent hours renaming files or updating hundreds of spreadsheet cells, you know how tedious tasks like these can be. But what if you could have your computer do them for you?

In Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, you’ll learn how to use Python to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand-no prior programming experience required. Once you’ve mastered the basics of programming, you’ll create Python programs that effortlessly perform useful and impressive feats of automation to:

Search for text in a file or across multiple files
Create, update, move, and rename files and folders
Search the Web and download online content
Update and format data in Excel spreadsheets of any size
Split, merge, watermark, and encrypt PDFs
Send reminder emails and text notifications
Fill out online forms

Step-by-step instructions walk you through each program, and practice projects at the end of each chapter challenge you to improve those programs and use your newfound skills to automate similar tasks.

Don’t spend your time doing work a well-trained monkey could do. Even if you’ve never written a line of code, you can make your computer do the grunt work. Learn how in Automate the Boring Stuff with Python.

Udemy Online Video Course

The Automate the Boring Stuff with Python Programming online course on Udemy.com covers most of the content of the book. If you’d prefer a video format for learning to program, you can use the discount code NOV2019 to get an 80% discount. You will have lifetime access to the course content and can post questions to the course’s forums.

You can support the author by electing to pay more. Using the discount codes on this site gives the author a larger share than those who sign up from Udemy’s own course search results. <!–You can choose to take a smaller discount and pay the author more with the following discount codes: PAY_20_DOLLARS, PAY_30_DOLLARS, PAY_40_DOLLARS–>

Like this book? Writing a review helps get it in front of more people!

Chapter 0 – Introduction
Chapter 1 – Python Basics
Chapter 2 – Flow Control
Chapter 3 – Functions
Chapter 4 – Lists
Chapter 5 – Dictionaries and Structuring Data
Chapter 6 – Manipulating Strings
Chapter 7 – Pattern Matching with Regular Expressions
Chapter 8 – Reading and Writing Files
Chapter 9 – Organizing Files
Chapter 10 – Debugging
Chapter 11 – Web Scraping
Chapter 12 – Working with Excel Spreadsheets
Chapter 13 – Working with PDF and Word Documents
Chapter 14 – Working with CSV Files and JSON Data
Chapter 15 – Keeping Time, Scheduling Tasks, and Launching Programs
Chapter 16 – Sending Email and Text Messages
Chapter 17 – Manipulating Images
Chapter 18 – Controlling the Keyboard and Mouse with GUI Automation
Appendix A – Installing Third-Party Modules
Appendix B – Running Programs
Appendix C – Answers to the Practice Questions

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Review Book Offer

If you’d like to receive a free print copy of Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, please email the author at al@inventwithpython.com. Please specify you want “Automate the Boring Stuff with Python”. You’ll receive a free ebook to read, and upon posting a review to Amazon, you will receive a complementary print review copy of the book. (UPDATE: There’s been a large amount of interest, and I can’t guarantee you’ll get a print book. However, I can definitely send you an ebook to review.)

To demonstrate that you will be able to write a review, please send me a link to an Amazon, Goodreads, or Powells review you have written before. If you haven’t written an Amazon review before, please explicitly tell me in your email you have an Amazon account and can post reviews. I’m happy to send out books to reviewers, but I can only respond to serious inquiries from folks who have read these instructions.

Please post an honest review. Posting a negative review will not impact whether or not you get a free print book. The only requirements are that the review be a minimum of 100 words, you must live within the United States (due to shipping costs), that you must have purchased $50 of products off Amazon (to be eligible to post Amazon reviews), and that you email me first before writing the review.

Thanks!

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Additional Content

Download files used in the book
List of CSS Selector Tutorials
List of JSON APIs
List of Programming Practice Sites
List of Web Comics
Schedulers for Windows, Mac, and Linux
How to Do PyCon (or any tech conference)

About the Author

Al Sweigart is a software developer and teaches programming to kids and adults. He has written several books for beginners, including Scratch Programming Playground, Cracking Codes with Python, Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python, and Making Games with Python & Pygame