Automate the Boring Stuff with Python
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.
Stats for nerds
75recommend
95mentions
81people
2015–2026years
93% recommend6% neutral1% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Congrats on the journey and desire to learn.
There's different books or approaches to learn more depending on your needs.
It's usually useful to tailor things to whatever you already produce for others or consume for yourself because then you get the most of your feedback loop.
Can you share more about what you've tried so far, with what tools, or what feels the most fun or useful ?
Depending on your answers one might recommend things like
- https://automatetheboringstuff.com/
- land of lisp (comics and games with functional programming to intentionally separate you from vibe coding traditional tools)
- web related dev with different viz or presentation tools
useful concepts regardless will be, in my mind, unit testing and how to approach problems and breaking them down but it all depends on where you want to go.
- Under $1000:
- coffee machine: coffee has now become part of our morning routine (coffee dates) where we sit and talk over coffee with the dog in our laps. Play around with different beans and blends. Saves money, fun to clean.
- proton mail/pass: I now have a super private email, and I spin up aliases when I need to sign up for something. 400+ aliases later and I get less spam, that I can destroy instantly.
- Hoka walking shoes: I have debilitating arthritis (under 30YO) and could barely walk a kilometre. These shoes allow me to walk upto 5kms a day without much pain.
Under $100:
- fallout 4 on PC: modding this old game and playing it on survival mode has reinvigorated my passion for gaming, it’s also unlocked a new hobby in modding existing games.
- automate the boring stuff with Python: this book got me in to programming, a relatively lucrative career and lifestyle booster.
- Ritalin: I’ve gone my whole life without knowing I had ADHD. Taking medication for it has been a complete game changer in terms of happiness and ability to relax
- I'm also a self taught programmer, my first book about programming was "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python", then I tried to learn C and I didn't understand anything of what I read until I find "Introduction to Computing Systems" by Yale Patt and Sanjay Patel, great book.
Edit: also did 200 Codewars katas to practice, then started to build things.
- I mean, so far, its helped make things a bit easier for me to understand. I've also read "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" by Al Sweigart, which as someone with a non-CS background, I found very helpful, even when going back as a reference.
- Humble Bundle had some nice collections on Python for many uses. For in general, I remember that Serious Python and Automate the Boring Stuff with Python were both good.
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