Chris

While working as a researcher in distributed systems, Dr. Christian Mayer found his love for teaching computer science students.To help students reach higher levels of Python success, he founded the programming education website Finxter.com that has taught exponential skills to millions of coders worldwide. He's the author of the best-selling programming books Python One-Liners (NoStarch 2020), The Art of Clean Code (NoStarch 2022), and The Book of Dash (NoStarch 2022). Chris also coauthored the Coffee Break Python series of self-published books. He's a computer science enthusiast, freelancer, and owner of one of the top 10 largest Python blogs worldwide.His passions are writing, reading, and coding. But his greatest passion is to serve aspiring coders through Finxter and help them to boost their skills. You can join his free email academy here.

Less Is More in Design

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This chapter draft from my upcoming book “From One to Zero: Minimalism in Programming” will appear in revised form in 2021 with NoStarch (SanFrancisco). Stay tuned for updates on the book launch: In this chapter, you’ll enter a vital area in computer science that greatly benefits from a minimalistic mindset: design and user experience (UX). … Read more

Top 10 Algorithm Cheat Sheets

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Hey Finxters! Do you  know what time it is? That’s right! It’s time for some more cheat sheets!! These cheat sheets are meant to help you on your way to becoming a great Python developer and of course becoming one of the best Python freelancers globally! This article is all about algorithms used in software … Read more

Python property() — What You Always Wanted to Know But Never Dared to Ask

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Object-orientation is great way to encapsulate data in your application. This minimizes complexity and adheres to good software engineering principles. However, attributes in Python can be easily accessed from the outside—they’re not really encapsulated. That’s one of the reason the property() built-in function exists: it allows you to truly encapsulate data with the means of … Read more

Python id() Function

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Python’s built-in id(object) function takes a Python object as an input and returns the identity of an object that is a static, unique integer. The identity is static, it never changes throughout the program’s execution, and unique, no other object has the same identity. It is implemented in cPython by returning the address of the … Read more

Python vars() Function

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Python’s built-in vars() function returns the __dict__ attribute of an object—a dictionary containing the object’s changeable attributes. Without argument, it returns the local symbol table similar to locals(). Python’s built-in vars() function returns a dictionary of name: value mappings of all the names defined in the local scope or the scope of the optional object … Read more

Python type() Function

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Python’s built-in type() function has two purposes. First, you can pass an object as an argument to check the type of this object. Second, you can pass three arguments—name, bases, and dict—to create a new type object that can be used to create instances of this new type. Usage Learn by example! Here’s an example … Read more

A Recursive Pathfinder Algorithm in Python

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A simple and effective way to grow your computer science skills is to master the basics. Knowing the basics sets apart the great coders from the merely intermediate ones. One such basic area in computer science is graph theory, a specific subproblem of which—the pathfinder algorithm—we’ll address in this tutorial. So first things first: What … Read more

Python object() Function

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Python’s built-in object() function takes no argument and returns a new featureless object—the base and parent of all classes. As such it provides all methods that are common to all Python class instances such as __repr__() and other “dunder” methods. However, unlike for all non-object instances, you cannot assign arbitrary attributes to an instance of … Read more

How to Calculate the Weighted Average of a Numpy Array in Python?

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Numpy Weighted Average np.average(array, axis=0, weights=[0.1,0.1,0.8])

Problem Formulation: How to calculate the weighted average of the elements in a NumPy array? Definition weighted average: Each array element has an associated weight. The weighted average is the sum of all array elements, properly weighted, divided by the sum of all weights. Here’s the problem exemplified: Quick solution: Before we discuss the solution … Read more

Python repr() Function — A Helpful Guide with Example

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Python’s built-in repr(obj) function returns the standard string representation of the provided object. This often includes the type and memory address of the object—for lack of further information. For example, the returned string representation may be ‘<main.Car object at 0x000001F66D11DBE0>’ for a custom object of type Car. The function internally calls the method obj.__repr__() which … Read more

Python str() Function

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Python’s built-in str(x) function converts the object x to a string using the x.__str__() method or, if non-existent, the repr(x) built-in function to obtain the string conversion. Syntax str() Syntax: str(object) # –> Most common case: convert an object to a string str(object=b”, encoding=’utf-8′, errors=’strict’) # –> Not so common case: Converts a bytes or … Read more