This presentation is to help beginning python programmers find answers to all their questions

1. How to Find Answers
To Your Questions
Fundamental Topics Night
Boston Python Meet-up
September 23rd, 2013

2. CC.BY Finger Face,
by Tsahi Levent-Levi on Flickr

3. CC.BY Question Monster by Paul Sableman on Flickr

4. Deb Nicholson,
Python non-expert

5. I do not have
all the answers

6. Ask the right question

7. ● Can you replicate it?

8. ● Can you replicate it?
● Picking apart the error message

9. ● Can you replicate it?
● Picking apart the error message
● Take a break

10. Food & Coffee by Michael Dougherty, CC.BY.SA

11. Try turning it off
and back on again

12. Ask the right question
in the right place

13. CC.BY Three Buckets by Adele Prince on Flickr

14. CC.BY Three Buckets by Adele Prince on Flickr

15. CC.BY Three Buckets by Adele Prince on Flickr

16. CC.BY Three Buckets by Adele Prince on Flickr

17. Questions about your
tools or environment

18. ● OpenHatch

19. ● OpenHatch
● IRC and GIT have help

20. ● OpenHatch
● IRC and GIT have help
● Your operating system

21. ● OpenHatch
● IRC and GIT have help
● Your operating system
● Editors and IDE FAQ's

22. Links
●
https://openhatch.org/
●
http://freenode.net/faq.shtml
● http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~blynn/gitmagic/
●
http://www.linuxquestions.org/
● http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/
●
http://www.vim.org/docs.php
●
http://ipython.org/
● http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs188/fa06/eclipse.html

23. Python questions

24. ● Python's own documentation

25. dir(random)

26. help(random)

27. ● Python's own documentation
● Stack Overflow

28. Bonus: Your question may
have already been answered

29. Minus: Dudes on the internet

30. Minus: Dudes on the internet
...who will not do your
homework

31. ● Python's own documentation
● Stack Overflow
● Google

32. Especially if you don't
know where to start

33. Hints for search terms

34. ● Try rephrasing (use a thesaurus!)

35. ● Try rephrasing (use a thesaurus!)
● Paste the whole error message

36. ●
Try rephrasing (use a thesaurus!)
● Paste the whole error message
● Wikipedia (Celery isn't always a
vegetable)

37. Celery + programming

38. “Celery is an open source asynchronous
task queue/job queue based on
distributed message passing.”
(from Wikipedia)

39. Pickle, from Wikipedia in the Public Domain

40. ...pickle is the standard mechanism for object
serialization; pickling is the common term
among Python programmers for serialization
(unpickling for deserializing). (from Wikipedia)

41. Use lots of words and
don't forget to put “python”
or “programming” in there.

42. Links
●
docs.python.org/2/
●
http://docs.python.org/3/
●
http://stackoverflow.com/
●
http://pymotw.com/
●
Google and Wikipedia

43. Project specific
questions

44. ● Check the docs

45. ● Check the docs
● Search the bugtracker

46. ● Check the docs
● Search the bugtracker
● IRC or the mailing list

47. How to phrase questions

48. CC.BY.SA Question Face by Quinn Dombrowski on Flickr

49. snotty :(

50. CC.BY “Free sofa massacre” by walknboston, on Flickr
HI!!!

51. Specific is better

52. “Using wrong library?”
or
“Difference between C++ random
number generation and Python”

53. Loads of details

54. ● What version of python?

55. ● What version of python?
● Other programs that are involved

56. ● What version of python?
● Other programs that are involved
● What have you already tried?

57. Paste code and/or errors
into your request or
link to pastebin.com

58. Quick Recap

59. Ask the right question
in the right place

60. CC.BY Three Buckets by Adele Prince on Flickr

61. There are places for
nearly every question

62. Verbose is always better

63. ● diveintopython.net – online and free!
● Headfirst Python – kid-friendly! (O'Reilly)
● Learning Python – beginner friendly! (O'Reilly)
● Programming Python – a bit denser (O'Reilly)
● Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional
(Apress)
Books and Tutorials

64. CC.BY Finger Face,
by Tsahi Levent-Levi on Flickr

65. Questions?
#bostonpython on freenode.net
CC.BY.SA Questions by Gillian Maniscalco on Flickr