[portland] Advice for someone wanting to get into Python

[Andrew Lorente]

>
> I'll grab the h1, h2s, all the links, the meta tags, and the HTTP response
> code and throw them into a spreadsheet.
>

Oh yeah there's excellent library support for that. You should check out
Requests <http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/index.html> (for
fetching the pages) and
BeautifulSoup<http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/>(for
examining them).

It sounds like you're exemplifying the virtues of a
programmer<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall#Virtues_of_a_programmer>already.
Have fun!

On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 7:32 AM, Francis Storr <fstorr at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all
>
> Thanks so much for the replies so far. I've bought the epub version of
> Learning Python The Hard Way and have started to work through that. I'll
> check out the Dummies book and see what that's like.
>
> As to why Python? Well, firstly, it's there and looks interesting.
> Secondly I've heard Python has some nice data crunching tools and that's
> something that interests me. For instance, for my job I frequently audit
> the content of sites. On a per-page basis, I'll grab the h1, h2s, all the
> links, the meta tags, and the HTTP response code and throw them into a
> spreadsheet. It's tedious work, especially on a large site, so if I could
> build a tool to extract that data for me, then that would be great. I also
> occasionally have to trawl through search logs and they generally need a
> good amount of cleaning up before I can start to analyze them. I could try
> to use a mixture of grep and sed to do that, but why not try something else
> that's probably easier? I'm also interested in what tools there might be to
> help with analysis of that data.
>
> I think that's the gist of why Python :)
>
> Francis
>
> On Jun 28, 2012, at 10:32 PM, Matt Youell wrote:
>
> > Hi Francis!
> >
> > Why are you interested in Python vs. other languages? Is there some
> specific programming task that you have in mind? Or particular
> tools/frameworks?
> >
> > --
> > -/matt/-
> > http://youell.com/matt
> >
> >
> >
> > On 6/28/12 2:51 PM, Francis Storr wrote:
> >> Hi all
> >>
> >> First post here; I'm hoping for some advice to get me started with
> Python. I'm a UX designer based in Portland. I started off on the web years
> ago coding (lots of HTML + CSS, a smattering of JavaScript, and some PHP)
> before changing tack and moving into design. For a while now I've wanted to
> tinker with Python but don't know where the best place to start is. I've
> had a look at beginner's books (I am definitely a book person) and there
> isn't one that seems to stand out as being great. Is there one that is
> better than the rest? I'm after something that's not written for the
> hardcore programmer; something that will hold my hand nicely. Also, what
> would be a better meet up for me to attend: the monthly meetup or the
> monthly hack night?
> >>
> >> Thanks :)
> >>
> >> Francis
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/portland
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
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