Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. 2 Ed

 Software is at the core of so many of the tools we use today: nearly everyone uses social networks to communicate, many people have internet-connected computers in their phones, and most office jobs involve interacting with a computer to get work done. As a result, the demand for people who can code has skyrocketed. Countless books, interactive web tutorials, and developer boot camps promise to turn ambitious beginners into software engineers with six-figure salaries.

 This book is not for those people. It’s for everyone else.

 On its own, this book won’t turn you into a professional software developer any more than a few guitar lessons will turn you into a rock star. But if you’re an office worker, administrator, academic, or anyone else who uses a computer for work or fun, you will learn the basics of programming so that you can automate simple tasks such as these:

• Moving and renaming thousands of files and sorting them into folders
• Filling out online forms—no typing required
• Downloading files or copying text from a website whenever it updates
• Having your computer text you custom notifications
• Updating or formatting Excel spreadsheets
• Checking your email and sending out prewritten responses

 These tasks are simple but time-consuming for humans, and they’re often so trivial or specific that there’s no ready-made software to perform them. Armed with a little bit of programming knowledge, however, you can have your computer do these tasks for you.