Stephen Gruppetta (@s_gruppetta

Stephen Gruppetta

@s_gruppetta_ct

Constantly looking for innovative ways to talk and write about Python • Mentoring learners • Writing about Python • Writing about technical writing

A year ago

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Iterators in nested `for` loops

Earlier this week I posted a quiz about how many iterators there are in this code numbers = [2, 5, 10, 3, 99, 42] for number in numbers: for another_number in numbers: print(number, another_number) …let's explore with the help of this visual aid A short series

A year ago

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Understanding Mutable and Immutable Elements in Tuples

Yesterday I talked about tuples when they're used as dictionary keys Tuples are immutable But their contents don't have to be… Let's look at this tuple `book_entry` which contains an integer, a couple of strings, and a list as its elements twitter.com/s_gruppetta_ct/status/1678690650160791552

A year ago

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What Data Types Can You Use in Dictionaries

What data types can you use in a dictionary? There are two different answers, one for the keys and one for the values of a dictionary Values can be any type you want But there are some limitations for keys

2 years ago

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Arithmetic Operators in Python

There's nothing magical about arithmetic operators For example: >>> my_numbers * 2 returns the same as: >>> my_numbers.__mul__(2) `.__mul__()` is the special method which defines what multiplication using * does But, this can be misleading. There's a bit more happening…

2 years ago

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Methods and Built-In Functions

"Why do we use a built-in function, `len()` to find the length of a list but a method, `.count()` to find how often a value occurs? "Why aren't they either both methods or both built-in functions?" Great question asked in a session I was running this week…

The discussion led to what seems like an inconsistency List is not the only data type that has a `.count()` method And `len()` doesn't work with all data types, either So, why don't we treat them in the same way?

2 years ago

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Why do we use methods sometimes and other notation at other times?

"Why do we use a method to get the index from a value but we use square brackets for the other way round?" I was asked this question this week while looking at >>> cities = ["London", "New York", "Berlin", "New Delhi"] >>> cities.index("New York") 1 >>> cities[1] 'New York'

2 years ago

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London Cabbies and Python Mappings and Sequences

You hail a black cab in London: "42 Python Street, please" and you get in the cab This journey will meander through Python mappings and sequences… but first, how much do you know about London cabbies, as London's taxi drivers are called?

2 years ago

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Python Dictionaries: Does Order Matter?

Let's travel back in time to a pre-Python 3.6 era The order of items was meaningless After all, what matters is the key-value association But things changed in Python 3.6, and again in 3.7, and now the order is maintained But beware, they're still mappings not sequences

2 years ago

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Understanding Data Type Categories in Python - Part 1

We often learn about lists, dictionaries, and other data types early on in our journey to learn to code… …but it’s tempting to ignore the details of categories of data types such as iterable, sequence, collection, and so on I wrote a series of threads about this recently

2 years ago

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7-Day Series on Classes and OOP: Hogwarts School of Codecraft and Algorithmancy

Over the past 2 weeks I published a 7-day series on classes & OOP I knew I couldn't talk about everything, but I also wanted to make it reasonably (!) comprehensive Here are all the threads, from Year 1 to 7 at Hogwarts School of Codecraft and Algorithmancy It's long 0 of 7