Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
Fractals are beautiful, self-similar patterns that can be created by a computer from very simple rules. My Fractal Art Maker package makes it easy to use Python's turtle.py package to draw your own. You don't need to know recursion, but you can read my free book, The Recursive Book of Recursion if you're curious. If you want to learn how to draw pictures with Python code, I also have The Simple Turtle Tutorial.
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
I've been working on turtle-related projects and I needed a simple, interactive, single-file Python program to explain RGB color values. I wrote this one up as part of my work writing a Simple Turtle Tutorial written in Wikipedia-style Simple English so it can be translated to non-English languages. You can download the app from PyPI and look at its code on its git repo
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
"This workbook transforms Al Sweigart’s best-selling guide from a reading experience into a coding experience. Following Automate the Boring Stuff with Python chapter by chapter, this workbook will help you turn concepts into muscle memory through carefully designed exercises, projects, and real Python scripts."
Preorder links: Direct From the Publisher (preferred) | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Bookshop.org | Powell's | Kobo | Thriftbooks | Goodreads
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
I created a web app for aligning before/after photos. Ony of my hobbies is picking up litter, and I'll post before/after photos to the r/detrashed subreddit:
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
After you've learned the basic concepts, the best way to improve your coding skills is to work on projects. You may not know enough to contribute to popular open source projects, but you can create small programs on your own. Here's a list of 81 projects suitable for beginners. They're short, can be done in any language, and don't require additional software library installation. These projects are drawn from my free books, The Big Book of Small Python Projects, Cracking Codes with Python, and Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python. Each program has a link to a sample Python implementation, but I encourage you to make it from scratch.
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
I wrote some Python scripts to help me create the HTML web pages for an online version of Maze, a 1985 visual puzzle book by Christopher Manson that was a large inspiration for Blue Prince (my personal game of the year for 2025). I'm hosting it at https://inventwithpython.com/mazewebsite/
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
For Halloween 2024, I made a Recursive Fract-Al costume. It was literally an exponential amount of work! The idea came to me when I was writing The Recursive Book of Recursion
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
I needed a complete list of valid color names for Python's Tkinter package as part of my ButtonPad GUI framework development. The lists I found on the internet were either incomplete, buried under ads, and often just plain wrong. Here's a list of all 760 color names (valid and personally tested) for Python Tkinter.
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
Over the past week I've been experimenting with vibe coding: asking LLMs such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini write entire apps as if I had absolutely no programming ability at all. LLMs can easily solve programming challenges or interview questions. But I wanted to see how far the current LLMs can go when asked to make complete apps, and what kinds of failure patterns emerge. From the role of a non-programmer, I would only be able to fix bugs by describing them to the LLM. For simplicity, I choose small apps written in Python that use only the standard library and the tkinter package for the GUI. This blog post details the failures: the kinds of apps that AI just isn't capable of making.
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
The nominees for the Python Software Foundation's Board of Directors 2025 election have been announced. You can find a full list on the nominees page. This year there are 4 seats open on the PSF Board. You can see who is currently on the board on the PSF Officers & Directors page. I'm pleased to announce I'm endorsing the following nominees: Abigail Dogbe, Archana Vaidheeswaran, Daniele Procida, Jannis Leidel, Sheena O'Connell, Simon Willison