Automate The Boring Stuff: An Intro to Automation with Python

Chris Flynn, one of our resident Makers, is offering a free, ongoing, bi-weekly Zoom class which will cover the contents of the book Automate The Boring Stuff with Python. This course will tackle a chapter each class, and help guide students through the basics of writing and troubleshooting their own Python code. The book is available as a PDF for free online, or can be purchased through Amazon or other book providers. Students will be expected to read each chapter ahead of each class. Ongoing class discussion will be held on our Slack, and students are encouraged to share their progress in that forum.

We ask that folks who sign up for this class consider making a donation. It's incredible to offer free programming like this and every contribution, large or small, makes it possible for us to offer a class like this one.

About Python

If you've ever spent hours renaming files or updating hundreds of spreadsheet cells, you know how tedious tasks like these can be. But what if you could have your computer do them for you?

Python is a programming language that allows you to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand-no prior programming experience required. Once you've mastered the basics of programming, you'll create Python programs that effortlessly perform useful and impressive feats of automation to:

• Search for text in a file or across multiple files
• Create, update, move, and rename files and folders
• Search the Web and download online content
• Update and format data in Excel spreadsheets of any size
• Split, merge, watermark, and encrypt PDFs
• Send reminder emails and text notifications
• Fill out online forms

Step-by-step instructions walk you through each program, and practice projects at the end of each chapter challenge you to improve those programs and use your newfound skills to automate similar tasks.

About the Instructor

Christopher Flynn has been a software engineer for the past 20 years and lives with his wife and two kids in Dublin. An avid maker interested in 3d printing, woodworking and Electronics, Chris has been one of our more active members at here MAxT - often sharing his knowledge and experience with other Makers. He's helped with projects ranging from 3D printing to getting the Raspberry Pi (the brain) of our CNC router put together. He's also been a regular fixture at MAxT events, and is a member of our Maker Council.