Michael Inden - Python Challenges: 100 Proven Programming Tasks Designed to Prepare You for Anything

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First of all, thank you for choosing this book. In it you will find a wide range of practice exercises on a broad mix of topics that will help you improve your Python coding skills in an enjoyable manner.

We all know the saying practice makes perfect. In crafts and other areas of real life, there is a lot of practice, but the serious case is rare, such as in sports, music, and other fields. Oddly enough, this is often significantly different for us software developers. We actually spend almost all of our time implementing and tend to rarely spend time practicing and learningsometimes not at all. Why is that?

Presumably, this is due to the time pressure that usually dominates our professional lives, and the fact that there isnt much suitable exercise material available, even if there are textbooks on algorithms and coding. Those tend to be either too theoretical or too source code-focused and contain too little explanation of the solutions. This book aims to change that.

So how did I come to tackle this book project? There are several reasons. On the one hand, I was asked again and again by mail or personally by participants of my workshops for a tutorial book as a supplement to my book Der Weg zum Java-Profi [Ind20]. Thats how the first idea came about.

What really triggered the whole thing was that a recruiter from Google approached me quite by surprise with an employment opportunity. As preparation for the upcoming interviews and to refresh my knowledge, I started to search for suitable material. Additionally, I developed some exercises for myself. In the process, I discovered the great, but also partly quite challenging book Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell [McD16], which inspired me further.

As a result, I initially set out on a Java-focused book project called Java Challenges in German and later in English. In the meantime, the idea came up to implement something similar for Python, first as a German version and later as an English version. So this Python edition is based on the Java version, but the whole book was revised and Pythonified. For this purpose, I added, slightly modified, or partially removed things in some places. In particular, I show (if appropriate) how to use Python features like List Comprehensions and so on to make solutions more concise.

This book is explicitly not intended for programming novices. It is aimed at readers who already have basic or even good knowledge of Python and want to deepen it with exercises. By solving small programming exercises, you will expand your knowledge about Python, algorithms, and sound OO design in an entertaining way.

This book provides a widespread mix of exercises on different topics. Some puzzles may not be of direct, practical importance, but indirectly they help improve your creativity and your ability to find solutions.

In addition to exercises and documented solutions, each topic covered in the book starts with a short introduction. You can use the introductions to get up to speed with the exercises to about the level of difficulty. In each subject area, there are always a few easier exercises to get you started. With a little practice, you should also be able to tackle more difficult problems. Occasionally there are some really challenging exercises, which experts can try their hand at (or those who want to become experts).

This book is packed with various practical tips. They include interesting background information as well as pitfalls to avoid.