April 2015
Intermediate to advanced
25 pages
49m
English
Content preview from Python in Education
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Chapter 4. Python’s Secret Weapon: Community!
Why is Python’s community so important?
When you learn a new skill, you become aware of and a participant in the unique culture associated with that thing. The military, teachers, musicians and other vocations all have their own characteristic and immediately recognizable cultures. The same goes for programmers and different programming languages.
Happily, the Python community has an excellent reputation for being a friendly group of people who value openness, actively engage in outreach and give up their time for educational support. These are all attributes that make it easy for both teachers and students to get involved with Python’s inimitable culture. As Eben Upton from the Raspberry Pi Foundation mentioned, the Python community is “exactly the sort you want. Education is a core part of the community.”
Python programmers (variously called Pythonists, Pythonistas and/or Pythonauts) are also a well organized bunch and have created the Python Software Foundation (PSF) as a rallying point for the community. It also means that there is a legal entity with which governments, companies and other institutions can formally interact.
The PSF
Here’s how the PSF describes itself:
The Python Software Foundation (PSF) is a volunteer led organization devoted to advancing open source technology related to the Python programming language. It qualifies under the US Internal Revenue Code as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) scientific and educational public ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.