Albert Sweigart is a software developer who lives in San Francisco. To date he has published three introductory books on Python, all of which can be downloaded for free from his website
Invent With Python. Readers may recall the review of his most recent book,
Hacking Secret Ciphers with Python, that I
posted here last month, which was one of the most popular posts to date here at the aGupieWare blog. Over the weekend, Al was kind enough to answer a few questions via email for an interview.
Q: First, thanks for taking the time for this interview. Could you tell
us a bit about yourself and your programming background?
A: I started programming in BASIC when I was in the 3
rd
grade, which I always hate to say because it makes people believe that you have
to start programming at a young age to become proficient in it. All of my
programs up until college were pretty much variations of the same program. I
didn’t really teach myself all that much, and these days anyone could do in a
few months what I did in those several years.
Q: You've published three introductory books on Python, all of which are available on your website inventwithpython.com.
The first two, "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python", and its
sequel, "Making Games with Python and Pygame," are geared toward kids,
while the third, "Hacking Secret Ciphers with Python," seems to be
intended more for an adult audience. How have the three books been
received?
A: Altogether, the books seemed fairly well received. I was
surprised that people liked my first book, which led me to continue writing.
The Amazon reviews are almost exclusively 5 and 4 stars, and I get an occasional
Thank You email from readers. “Hacking Secret Ciphers with Python” is probably
a bit much for young kids, but I think teenagers and adults would be able to
digest it.
Q: Do you see the cryptography book as a step in a different
direction, or as an extension of the puzzles and games introduced in the
earlier works?
A: I saw it as a different direction. Video games are a
great way to get people involved in programming, but I wanted something else as
well. I noticed that there were a lot of code and cipher books that talked
about the classical ciphers the book covers, but very few that explained how to
break them and none about how to write programs to break them. I saw it as an
opportunity to reach a broader audience. The book itself is also aimed at
people with absolutely no prior programming or cryptography experience.
Q: What has drawn you to python? What do you think are its strengths and weaknesses?
A: Python is a very readable scripting language. Unlike Perl
which has very obtuse use of punctuation characters for different language
features, and unlike Java which has an overwhelming amount of boilerplate code,
Python seems to be a very direct, “get it done” language. It also has a very
gentle learning curve. I’ve written a blog article before about how
Python isthe new BASIC. I use Python for both my own software projects and for teaching programming. At
this point, I’ve become so accustomed to Python and its idioms that I’m afraid
I’ve become blind to its weaknesses, so I really couldn’t think of any.
Q: What are your favorite python modules?
A: Pygame is excellent for creating games and 2D graphical
applications. I’ve written a couple modules that work on top of Pygame called
Pygcurse
and
Pyganim,
which add a curses-console for text games and sprite animation, respectively. Lately
I’ve started using Requests and Beautiful Soup for downloading and parsing web
pages for my Python script. (I’ve written a simple Reddit bot that
automatically checks several different web comics and posts them to the
r/comics section of the site.) I have some experience with wxPython for
creating GUIs for traditional desktop apps, but I’ve heard good things about Qt
bindings for Python as well.
Q: Do you currently have any new python books in the works?
A: I’m writing a new Python-for-beginners book with
NoStarch Press, which
tentatively has the title “Automate with Python”. I’ve described it as “a
programming book for people who don’t want to become software developers”. I
noticed a lot of office workers, administrators, and academics do a lot of
computer-based tasks that involve a lot of mindless, repetitive clicking or
compiling of data. This book aims to teach them just enough programming so that
they can automate these tasks. It covers basic Python, and then goes into
several different modules for text parsing, web scraping, moving and renaming
large amounts of files, updating spreadsheets, or sending automated emails and
text message alerts. I’m hoping to have it available by summer of 2014.
Q: You accept bitcoin donations through your website. Have you worked on,
or are you currently working on, any Bitcoin related projects? Can you
speak to the intersection of Bitcoin and Python?
A: I had only added it to the site after other people on the
internet suggested it, but I’m glad I did. As with many people, bitcoin had
been in my periphery for a while. But setting up the wallet for the donation
link forced me to learn more about it. Although as of yet I haven’t worked on
any bitcoin projects (if anything, the Tor Project will get my focus once I’ve
finished the next book). But for all the negative publicity that bitcoin gets
regarding its use to buy drugs and illegal things (all of which, by the way,
can apply to cash) I’m really excited about it. It allows minors and people in
third world countries to conduct commerce over the internet, and that is a Big
Deal.
As to Bitcoin and Python, I think that having a new ability
to receive and send money over the internet without middlemen (e.g. Visa) along
with open source software like Python really lowers the barrier-to-entry for
software development outside of America and traditional software-producing
strongholds.
Q: Like your other works, the cryptography book can be read online
or downloaded for free. But if a reader purchases it, you donate all
proceeds of the book to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative
Commons and the Tor Project. Why did you decide to donate the proceeds
for the book on cryptography?
A: It was the suicide of Aaron Swartz, to whom the book is
dedicated to, that made the decision for me. I hadn’t met Aaron, though I have
friends who were friends of him. His passing was a tragedy, but also a wake-up
call for myself. Looking at his life really made me start looking at mine and
how I wanted to make contributions like he had. At the time I was, after two
years of off-and-on writing, a couple months away from finishing “Hacking
Secret Ciphers with Python”. The other books were selling well, and I had a day
job that gave me a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. So I decided that I
would turn the proceeds from the books over to help organizations that are
doing some really wonderful and necessary things to protect the internet.
Q: What advice would you give to young and not so young beginning programmers?
A: My main piece of advice is that you suck at coding and
will continue to suck for the rest of your life. Once you’ve accepted that, you’ll
be able to move on and write some interesting software. Don’t worry about the nagging
feeling that you aren’t good enough or know enough, because that feeling will
be permanent no matter what you do. And if it doesn’t, it’s because you’ve
given up on forcing yourself to learn new things (which is the real danger.)
Also, you’re never too old or too bad at math to learn to
code. Most programming doesn’t even require mathematical knowledge beyond
arithmetic, and unless you’re in your sixties or seventies you aren’t even too
old to become a professional software developer. Programming isn’t something
that requires you to be a super genius to do. More than anything, having an
interest and motivation to act on that interest is all you need to be set on
the right path.
Q: Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions!
