Practical Python — Detailed Cheat Sheet
Learn by doing: examples, idioms, libraries, projects & a 30-day plan
Quick start — get Python running (2 minutes) Stdlib & common modules
• Install Python 3.11+ from [Link] or use • [Link] for paths, json, csv, datetime,
your package manager. [Link], itertools, functools.
Run REPL: python or python3. Try: • Use requests for HTTP (pip install requests)
print('hello'). and BeautifulSoup for parsing HTML (bs4).
Create a venv: python -m venv venv. Activate: Advanced features
Windows venv\\Scripts\\activate, mac/linux
source venv/bin/activate. • Generators with yield for memory efficiency.
Decorators to wrap functions.
• Editor suggestion: VS Code — open folder, • dataclasses for simple classes. use
create .py files, press Run. functools.lru_cache for caching.
Core language — essentials One-liners & idioms
• Variables & types: int, float, str, bool, • Swap: a,b = b,a. Reverse: lst[::-1]. Unique
list, dict, set, tuple. preserving order:
• Control flow: if/elif/else, for, while. Use list([Link](items)).
range(), enumerate(). • Join: ','.join(list_of_strings).
• Functions: def, return, default args, *args,
30-day roadmap & projects
**kwargs. Use f-strings for formatting.
• Comprehensions: list/dict/set comprehensions • Week1: fundamentals (variables, lists,
and generator expressions. control flow, file I/O).
Data structures & examples • Week2: intermediate (OOP, modules, exception
handling, small CLI app).
• List: lst = [1,2,3]; [Link](4); slicing • Week3: APIs, regex, tests, concurrency
lst[1:3]. basics.
• Dict: d = {'a':1}; d['b']=2; iterate: for • Week4: polish projects, tests, packaging,
k,v in [Link](): push to GitHub.
• Set: unique values; Tuple: immutable
20 Practice exercises (progressive)
sequence.
File I/O & JSON/CSV • 1. Hello world + input name. 2. FizzBuzz. 3.
Reverse string. 4. Vowel counter.
• Use context managers: with open('file','r') • 6. Read CSV and sum a column. 7. Word
as f: data = [Link]() frequency using Counter. 11. CLI todo app
• CSV: import csv; use [Link] and (JSON).
[Link]. • 12. Scrape webpage title (requests + bs4).
• JSON: import json; [Link](obj), 20. Final project: scrape/API -> CSV ->
[Link](s). report.
Exceptions & debugging Final tips
• Try/except/else/finally. Raise errors with • Type code, change examples, break them and
raise ValueError('msg'). fix. One exercise per day.
Debug with print(), pdb (import pdb; • Keep [Link] for snippets. Use virtualenv
pdb.set_trace()), and use pytest for tests. and [Link] for projects.
Practical Python — Detailed Cheat Sheet (continued)
Learn by doing: examples, idioms, libraries, projects & a 30-day plan
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