Programming Machine Learning

Python’s Building Blocks

I don’t know about you—for me, the boring part of learning a new language is the mandatory listing of basic types, operators, and control structures. Whenever I try to memorize the finer points of loop syntax and operator precedence, that information slips right off my brain. It only sticks once I start writing code.

For that reason, I won’t bog you down in details that you can look up yourself later, when you’re confronted with real code. I’ll keep this section on types, operators, and control structures as brief as possible, providing a broad overview and only zooming in on those few details that are important for this book.

Data Types and Operators

Python comes with the data types you expect: integers, floating-point ...