I don’t even feel like I’ve scratched the surface of what I can do with Python

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Hey there,

There’s a talented Python web developer I know of—I’ll call him “Mark”.

Mark’s a self-taught programmer and fledgling Pythonista, and he’s working hard to grow his skills. He’s grateful for his coding job and came to Python from far lands of Java and .NET.

Thanks to the internet and Stack Overflow he made amazing progress ramping up his Python skills early on.

But lately Mark has gotten himself stuck in a “Valley of Despair”—where learning progress is… slow… as… molasses…

It didn’t look like it in the beginning, but picking up the basics of Python was the easy part. What was a quick learning curve initially has completely petered out as of late.

Now of course, Mark still enjoys working with Python—it’s a beautiful programming language, after all. (One of my coworkers used to call it The Language of the Gods.)

But it’s tough feeling confident using Python when it seems like he’s forever stuck at a basic level of proficiency.

I mean, it’s fairly easy for him to come up with working solutions to most problems he faces with Python—

But there’s no roadmap for Mark to take his Python skills to the next level…

He doesn’t know what Python features and “hidden gems” are available that might be useful.

And that makes it so challenging—learning how to integrate all the pieces of the puzzle:

“I’ve been coding in Python full-time for a year and still don’t feel like I have any idea what I’m doing.”

A mindset of constant improvement and wanting to master the art of programming is really what drives Mark.

Yet, reading the technical documentation for everything would take up too much work during his day job…with his boss breathing down his neck.

Also, technical docs rarely seem to include the clear use cases and examples he so desperately wants.

Mark has discovered a few lesser-known features in Python that boosted his productivity, but again hunting those tricks down on forums and Stack Overflow sucks up too much of his productive time.

There’s not enough curation.

And now Mark’s dream of mastering Python is slowly withering away…

I totally identify with Mark, because a few years ago, that was me.

I’ve been writing code for more than 15 years now.

Mastering Python has been (and still is) a huge motivation for me in my career as a software developer.

I’m sharing Mark’s story with you because I’ve experienced similar struggles trying to grow my own Python skills.

I’ve dedicated the last several months of my professional life helping other Python developers overcome those struggles.

Not too long ago I discovered a fun & effective technique to teach developers the best practices and skills for writing clean and beautiful Python, in bite-sized chunks.

I called this technique Python Tricks.

“Python Tricks” started out as a short series of Python code screenshots that I shared on Twitter for a week —

To my surprise, they got a raving response and were shared and retweeted for days on end. Python developers around the world loved them.

These short-and-sweet code examples seemed worth exploring as a teaching tool…

Over the next days and weeks, a steady stream of Python developers reached out to me. They thanked me for making an aspect of Python they were struggling to understand click for them.

They found immense value in these “Python Tricks”, and told me how they helped get their learning progress unstuck and brought them back on the path to Python mastery.

Hearing this feedback felt awesome. These Python Tricks were “just code screenshots”, I thought.

But so many Python developers loved them—

So simple, yet so valuable.

As more and more developers signed up to receive my Python Tricks emails, I started noticing a pattern in the replies and questions I got:

Some Python Tricks worked great as motivating examples by themselves—but for the more complex ones there was no narrator to guide readers, no one to give them additional resources to develop a deeper understanding.

I realized that sometimes “just a code screenshot” isn’t enough to explain a cool Python feature.

These early Python Tricks we’re valuable, but also ultimately flawed.

Now Python Tricks is back with with a vengeance —

I took the best and most popular Python Tricks (+ brand new ones!) from the original series and started writing a new kind of Python book around them. It's called:

Python Tricks: The Book
A Buffet of Awesome Python Features

You can still get in on the 33% OFF early access discount today.

See the link below to learn more:

>> Click here to discover awesome new Python features (and get a 33% discount)

— Dan Bader